


all the tea in china

by cliffbooth



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Love, M/M, Sex, sirius trapped in Grimmauld Place was the original social distancing change my mind, this is what happens when you watch Marriage Story halfway through your fic, very mild domestic abuse (but I'm tagging it anyway)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:26:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23280166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cliffbooth/pseuds/cliffbooth
Summary: The Second War, time apart, and trying to fall in love again as very different people.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 1
Kudos: 23





	1. Chapter 1

_I'm the rank outsider, you can be my partner in crime_

Prologue. Late August, rural Hogsmead, 1975: 

It is summer here, and Sirius is large and strong over him. 

Two hands under the hem of his shirt, that pull his lower back up into a graceful arch. Then a change in precision, and Sirius hits a particularly gentle spot. 

Remus keens, a soft wash of mournful, quietly honest the way he always is. 

The day is cut too clean and bright. The sky, a great expanse of brilliant blue above the field they’re lying in, and August-burnt summer plants scratch and smooth naked flesh in equal measure. Great white clouds billow off in the distance, but closer, near the tip of Remus’ nose, air glitters like gold, and he thinks this is what heaven must appear to be. 

Sirius had laid down his jacket for Remus to lie on. Which Remus had, and then, before either really understood what happened, Sirius climbed on top of him and took what couldn’t be returned.

While it happens, Remus wants it to stop. Then he thinks it’s the only feeling worth anything ever and doesn’t want it to end. 

That’s the last coherent thought to form before Sirius settles into striking his prostate with each toss of the hips, and Remus keens and lets it just wash over him like rain. 

Sirius nuzzles against the cropped buzz of hair at Remus’ neck. Propped up on one shaky elbow, he stuffs fingers into Remus’ hair and neatly shoves him down to the Earth. Yet even his force is gentle, and Remus wants to cry. 

Then Sirius comes, until Remus is full, and with a choked sob, he follows Sirius over the edge. 

October 1995:

“She likes you, you know.”

“Who?”

“That girl, the Hufflepuff one.”

“Nymphadora?”

“Yeah, that’s the one!” 

2 a.m. tea. Remus brewed it carefully, like ritual. Sirius, slumped at the table, watched him with sleepy eyes. 

Midnight fuck and then tea, unable to sleep. The evening’s meeting weighed heavy in both their minds.

“And what could possibly give you that idea?”

“She kept staring at you the whole night.”

“Yes, that’s what being a werewolf gets you.”

“Nah, this was mighty different, love.” 

Remus flipped the burner on and cast a look over his shoulder. Sirius had slipped on one of Remus’ button ups, large enough to fit him like a ridiculously improper dress. Except he’d only buttoned it up where it needed to be buttoned, half his chest exposed and cotton slipping off one shoulder. His hair was a mess, which he continually swept it out of his eyes and pulled it up into an unfastened knot, only to have it slip down again. 

“How so, _sir?_ ” Remus put both hands on his hips, playfully square-jawed and defiant. Sirius snorted at ‘sir’, looking down at the near dress he wore and the little patch of thigh where it rode up because he’d primly crossed his legs. 

“Because,” he said, grabbing the near-empty pack already on the table by a neglected fruit bowl and shaking a cigarette out, “she was _staring._ ”

“And I told you, people _stare._ ” 

“She was staring at you like I used to. In the fifth year.” _Worn, loose loved sweaters. Rumpled sandy hair. It went gold in the library, over wood and afternoon sun and dust._ Remus, mid-doling out the loose tea into cups, laughed. 

“What? It’s _true!_ ” Sirius almost shouted. _Thin, pink scars, at your lip and bridge of your nose, high on the cheek near the temple. Little pained lines I could kiss._

“She doesn’t like me, Sirius. If anything, I’m a curiosity. Waiting for my claws to sprout and hair to grow out my ears.” The kettle whistled, and Remus flipped off the heat, pouring out the scalding water carefully. “Oh, people never know what to do. The few who know now, when they found out, spent days skittering around and scurrying out of my way. It’s maddening.” He carried over their tea and took a seat at the table. “People _gawk._ It’s expected.”

Sirius had twisted his face into a mild snarl.

“What’s wrong?” Remus fiddled with the jumper he wore, yanking it down past his underwear and naked legs. “Don’t like a lady staring?”

“ _I_ didn’t stare,” Sirius said pointedly. 

“No, that’s not how I meant it.” Remus said. Sirius had a wonderful knack for thinking many of Remus’ criticisms either included him or were meant for him directly. “You and James and Peter did not stare.”

“Peter probably did.” Sirius sipped his tea.

“Well, Peter…” Remus had it in him to smile. “Peter did lots of things.”

They sat in comfortable silence for long minutes. Sirius lit another cigarette. Remus watched the dying fire at the kitchen’s far back. They’d cleared the Order out hours ago. Meeting first, then a meal, something to lift the spirits. Sirius had helped himself to a little too much firewhisky, Remus noted. Fingers found his hand, which rested flat on the table, and held on. Sirius looked at him with intensity. 

“Alright, Moony? What’s on your mind?”

“Yes, I’m alright. Thinking about the meeting tonight.” 

“Oh…” Sirius murmured sympathy and held Remus’ cheek in his hand, thumb brushing back and forth under the cheekbone. “Of course. Yes, it’s all so awful, I know." 

Taken out of time for twelve long years, he was quick to assume the strange composure he had now. Because, really, Sirius had been present for five years. Three in the first war, and nearly two now. He’d gone into Azkaban as a young man, still a boy in so many ways, and today…

_You missed so much. So much. Your pain is vast, but nothing compared to mine._

“You’ve talked to Harry lately?” Remus pivoted. 

“Not as lately as I’d like.” Sirius frowned, disappointed with himself. “He’s quite busy, which is better, I suppose, than doing nothing. And, of course, I can’t tell him how worried I actually am.”

“Does he know you’re concerned?”

“No.”

“That’s good,” Remus said absently. Sensing a shift, Sirius returned to his tea. 

Another silence less easy than the first. A pattern of clink, sip, clatter each time they drank. Sirius reached for a third cigarette, and Remus, without looking, dragged the pack away from him. They both vaguely figured they should return to bed soon, getting low-eyed and feeling the first enticing pulls of yawns. 

And that was when it happened. 

Sirius picked up his cup, drank the last bits down, and midway to setting it back on the table, froze. It was so strange, it caught Remus’ attention. 

“ _What?_ ”

Sirius merely stared at Remus with huge eyes. He looked just shy of ill. 

“I have it.” It came out stuttered and breathless.

“What?” Remus asked again, irritated by the lack of answer and too sleepy to really think about what was so blatantly happening. 

“I’ve it. It.” Sirius set the cup down and let go as if burned. He got up, braced two hands on the chair, and tried not to appear as though he was inching away from the table. Remus grabbed the cup and looked inside. And sure enough, Sirius had the Grim. 

Remus could not deny the clear canine formation of loose leaves settled and stuck to the cup. Pointed ears and thin snout, even a small line of leaves tracing up into a tail. Tea drank down, the cup was cold to the touch, and the hearth at the end of the kitchen burned less bright. 

“You don’t have the Grim.”

Sirius gaped at him. His lips worked wordlessly, and wearing only an ill-fitting button up and half naked, he started to look a bit silly. Remus stared back, equally still. His hands, settled in his lap where Sirius could not see, shook. Then Sirius nearly roared and hurled the chair halfway across the room. It cracked and splintered in a few places. A minor casualty of the animalistic fury they both possessed, Sirius’ the least tamed. No doubt worn down by time in prison, whittling away at an already volatile temper. 

“I’ve the fucking Grim, you hear me!” 

Sirius went for the cup, but Remus grabbed it. 

“No, you don’t.”

“Look at it, Remus! Fucking _look_. I’ve it. It’s coming for me!” he yelled, spit flying. “While you sit there, fucking flat on your arse, so fucking calm. Telling me I don’t have it.” 

His rage, Remus thought, was slightly surprising. But this was new-Sirius, After Azkaban-Sirius, he reminded himself, a different entity altogether. Quicker to claw and snap, a Sirius who shouted now, threw fits now, tossed in the night and hissed in his sleep, begged to be choked in bed and cried, fucked with some deadly edge in the silver of his eyes, and snuck elderberries and firewhisky when he thought Remus wasn’t watching. 

“Because you don’t.” Remus repeated firmly. 

Shouting again, Sirius rushed him, but Remus, quicker and stronger, caught the impact standing. He snarled into Sirius’ face, broad hands digging into his arms. For a second, they wrestled, snapping and spitting, taken by their own animals. Until Sirius stilled, slumped in Remus’ arms, and wept. 

***

Dumbledore was waiting for him when he arrived. 

Remus came shooting through the fireplace, floo-ed and knocked down, with an embarrassing lack of grace and a disruptive, hazy puff of smoke.

“Remus! How good to see you.” 

Dumbledore stood by one of the crammed bookshelves and cast an amused look at Remus—who was presently picking himself up off the floor and dusting down his robes. He smiled warmly and settled behind his desk, transfiguring a small paperweight into a decent chair on the opposite side. Remus took a seat. 

“Thank you for seeing me, Professor, on such short notice.”

“Why, not at all, Remus. Your owl seemed quite urgent. And I assumed your lack of explanation within the letter only further indicated the urgency.” 

“Yes, sir. Yes.” 

For a second, they stared at each other. Dumbledore was patient, and Remus so rattled he forgot where to begin. 

“Well, Remus, why don’t you start.” Dumbledore held out a hand. Behind the half-moons, his eyes twinkled brightly, and Remus—not wanting to test such elastic patience—steeled himself and began. 

“Sirius,” he said slowly “has the Grim.”

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. 

“After a meeting a few nights ago, I made us both tea, and he had the Grim.” Remus wasn’t sure what else to say. Dumbledore continued to watch him, unruffled as usual. “He’s quite shaken up, even after I assured him the leaves bore no resemblance to the Grim at all.” 

“And do they look something other than Grim?”

Remus crumpled a little then, eyes going pained. “Not at all, I’m afraid. Even someone half-blind couldn’t have seen it as anything else.”

Dumbledore laughed quietly. “Do you have it with you? The cup?”

Remus pawed through his robes, producing a small stone. Tap of his wand, and it transformed into the cup. “I placed a freezing charm on it. Here.” He handed it to Dumbledore, who peered into its bowl with the same mild curiosity and levity he did everything with. His lack of reaction was dissatisfying, and Remus wished he’d give some indication of the dark sign they all saw. 

“Well,” Dumbledore said cautiously, “I cannot deny it’s certain resemblance to the Grim. It’s even a small tail there.” He squinted into the cup, amused, and Remus wanted to shake him. Then he focused on Remus and grew grave. “I feel the utmost sympathy for Mr. Black, Remus. He must be quite frightened.” Remus nodded. “Any omen, however unfounded, is never what we wish to receive. Please tell him that.” 

“He doesn’t know I’m here, actually.” 

“He doesn’t?”

“No. When he showed me the cup, I told him it didn’t look like the Grim.” 

“So you lied to him?” 

Remus felt old pangs of school day guilt. Then, remembering he was an adult, an Order Member, a former Hogwarts _professor_ , he drew himself up and said, “I’ve always placed little value in Divination, and I didn’t want to add to any of his fears. He panicked, understandably, and I figured adding to his unease was unhelpful.”

“And yet you have come to me now, in regard to the cup?”

“Yes.”

“So you consider it concerning enough for a second opinion, other than your own? You’re a very capable wizard, Remus. I hope you know that.”

“But, Professor—”

“And you’re in agreement with Mr. Black and share his fears?”

Remus didn’t say anything. 

“Ah...I see.” Dumbledore smiled. “I shall get Sybill, then?” 

It wasn’t a question. If it had been, Remus would’ve said ‘no’.

During his year teaching, he’d barely spent an hour with the woman. She remained reclusive in her tower, and what he heard about her, he heard as whisperings and snickers amongst his own students. He may have possessed his own element of reclusivity, taking breakfast and lunch in his office and trying to appear busy and ‘involved’ whenever potential conversation passed, but he did not have the absolute oddness Sybill did. They’d spoken briefly a few times during dinner, and she’d given him the shivers. 

Once, as he reached for the butter dish between them, she’d snatched up his wrist and read his palm.

For a second she just traced the lines with one taloned finger, spotting a thin scar by his thumb—Hoia Baciu, ‘87, painful Buck Moon—and tsking to herself. Remus hated himself for thinking she _knew_ , could smell it on him or see it in his eyes. Instead, she’d turned back to the lines and said,

“Ooo, a great loss, Professor. Quite clear.”

“Had many of those,” Remus had said dryly, knowing she wasn’t listening. 

“But no death,” she’d continued, “They’ll be living when you lose them. Yes, yes, yes. Prepare—” she stared up at him with freakishly large owl eyes, and said “—a funeral for the living.”

Remus had figured her mannerisms largely affectational and attention-seeking, and so he turned back to Hagrid, who was a much better conversationalist by far. 

That night, however, her comment remained with him. He’d left the meal and locked himself up in his office, set the lights low, and brewed tea. Then he’d tried to make headway on the considerably lacking Hinkypunk essays but kept faltering, distracted and restless. He kept circling back to one particular individual, a possible candidate of her prediction. 

But of course, it couldn’t be possible.

Locked up.

Guarded. 

Mad and no doubt broken. Destroyed, Remus hoped, fucking slobbering and half-dead, the only fate someone so evil deserved. 

_Sirius was small under him, pinned in a dark corner and undone. Remus backed him into the shadowed spot and snogged his prey in the night. Three am, and the great taut shiver of getting caught. To see Minerva’s face, tight and disapproving._

_Grey eyes hidden behind strands of coiled black, whimpering, and Remus didn’t know if Sirius was desperate or terrified. To think, both, and the thought thrilled him so much that he slammed Sirius up against the wall again, shoved a scarred, slender hand down his pants and pillaged the dusked sultry love right out of him._

_Sirius melted, scared and in awe of Remus in tandem. It ran him like a wire, hot and static. A sweet little thing taken by a big bad wolf. Unassuming in darned socks and nose stuffed in books, and sheepish little pink Humber smiles when girls teased him. But a beast he was! And Sirius begged to be taken._

Remus passed that corner each time he left his office. He’d never expected to retrace the worn castle steps of his adolescence, now here as order and mellowed maturity, instead of defiance and excitement. 

The corner pained him now. Just like the Gryffindor tables in the Great Hall and the stone ledge surrounding the courtyard outside, where Sirius had taken him in the sweltering May of their sixth year, just past midnight and kissed him under the waxing moon. The landing outside the common room portrait, a dell down the way of the Forbidden Forest, the low fence and reeds by the Shrieking Shack. Places where _love_ had happened. 

He passed these places quickly, eyes trained on his feet. Holiness had happened within the castle walls: indescribable elation and many nauseated just-turned nights, and friendship, and knowing for the first time in his life, he _belonged_. And he clung to that belonging like it was his own soul, terrified it would one day leave him, like smoke through his fingers, and that these years here were the best life he would ever live, and then it all came true. 

And now he walked the castle alone, two friends dead and gone, and one friend a friend no longer. And every joyous memory he had made him feel agonizingly foolish. 

_I bore my soul to you and gave you my love. And I never thought, not once, that you were lying._

Then the Hinkypunk essay before him blurred, wet and broken, and Remus didn’t even understand he was sobbing until he began shaking. 

***

Dumbledore summoned Sybill through the Floo. She arrived, batty as always, draped in shawls and wispy robes, gaudy jewelry, looking dazed. When she saw Remus, her already big eyes widened to saucers behind the thick frames and she exclaimed,

"Remus!”

“Hello, Sybill.”

“Oh, forgive me,” she said, just out of the fireplace. She brushed past Dumbledore, who smiled at her peculiarity, and took Remus by the shoulders. “Remus, I should’ve seen earlier than I did!”

“Hm?” Remus felt a bit like a long-suffering house pet, the way she petted and fussed over him.

“What you are!”

Oh. He got it now. What she meant, through her garbled nonsense. A _werewolf_.

“When you left, I didn’t even get to say farewell,” she continued, straightening his robes for him. “You always had a strange aura around you, Remus, something different. I never knew what it was!”

“Oh.”

“Until now.” She beamed at him, like he was expected to be pleased. He grimaced back.

“But that is not why you’re here today, no!” He wished she’d stop being so exclamatory. It made him itch all over. With one long finger, she traced the air around his face, not touching him but skirting the surface, like she was reading him. Her eyes opened even more somehow, as if she’d been zapped. “A bad sign,” she said.

Remus gulped.

Then, noticing the cup on Dumbledore’s desk, she rushed over and grabbed it. “Yes! There it is.” She turned the cup in circles. “The Grim.”

Dumbledore, from where he stood, cleared his throat and intervened. “Sybill, Remus here has brought the cup to me because—”

“It’s not yours!” she shouted, whirling to face Remus and pointing. “Here, here,” she scurried over to him, gave him the cup, and closed her own hands around his. “See, there you go, I can feel it now. Can’t you?”

Remus just _stared_ at her. Far off, he thought he heard Dumbledore chuckling.

“Love.”

“Hm?” Remus leaned forward, thinking he’d misheard.

“You love them. And that’s why you’re hear now. Because if it was your cup, you wouldn’t care. But you love them so much, and you’re worried.”

“No, I—”

“And you’ve lost them before, wrongly,” she whispered, searching his face. “And you don’t want to lose them now. Again.”

“Now you see—”

“Remus,” she laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

She smiled sadly.

“No!”

“Yes.”

“Bullshit. Merlin,” he said, grabbing the cup back. So upset was he now that he didn’t even care if Dumbledore heard him swear, or if for one second, he dropped the serene attitude he put on every day. For his colleagues, for his students, for Harry, for Sirius, for himself. “You’re wrong.” Why couldn’t things ever go to plan? Why did something always have to go terribly wrong?

The Fidelius. Azkaban. His brief tenure at Hogwarts. Now this. What bad sign had he been born under to deserve it all? Who cursed him? What evil thing decided it would be amusing to watch his whole life constantly unravel itself, further and further?

“Remus!” Sybill rasped, hands aloft.

Remus rushed to the hearth. “Divination’s worth shit as it is. Don’t know why I came here in the first place.”

Dumbledore watched passively. Sybill stood, contorted, as if taken by a spirit, bug-eyed and distraught at Remus’ exit.

“Remus! Wait a moment. If you would just—”

Then the fire flared, and Remus disappeared into nothing.

***

They laid together, sensual and naked, hot skin to hot skin, watching light run across the ceiling from window to back wall as cars passed outside. Green-fern wallpaper, palmed and dark, bled into black paneled walls. Remus watched it move in the dark. Overtired eyes made the leaves sway and swish, as if an animal were rustling deep among the plants. Like the Congo at night, down the river—the bed, a boat, carrying them along. 

Sirius gently untangled himself and dug around in the bedside table for cigarettes and a light. He clipped two in his mouth, lit them, and without a word, handed one to Remus.

“That was lovely,” Remus said softly, rolling onto his stomach, elbows on the rumpled pillow. Sirius remained sitting against the headboard. His eyes were trained on the far wall, and Remus wondered what he saw there. 

“You still thinking about it?” Remus asked, smoking blowing out his nose. To smoke was a bad ugly habit; to smoke after sex with Sirius was elegance, a positively corrupt, un-professorial activity he loved. “It’s been a few weeks. I don’t think you’ve much to fret over. It didn’t even look like a dog.”

Sirius, cigarette halfway to his mouth, nodded, uncharacteristically silent. With a smooth stomp, the most-exasperated angry grace Remus had ever seen, Sirius pulled his trousers on and went to the window. Perched on the sill, he shimmied the old frame open, and remained there, tapping ashes into the tray on the little table nearby. 

“Harry can never know,” he said at last. 

“Of course not,” Remus said, still propped on his stomach. “The poor lad’s already got far too many things on his young mind.”

“If it were really up to me, I’d pull him out of school.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“I most certainly would.”

“But it is up to you now, and you haven’t.” Remus laced his fingers together and watched Sirius smoke nervously at the open window. He smiled. “Routine’s good for him, I think. Keeps a clear head in all this uncertainty. You’d corrupt him.”

“But he’d be safe.” 

“Hogwarts is about the safest place for him to be. Safest place in Britain, I’d say. Additionally,” Remus pulled, “if you have the Grim, as you claim you do, why should Harry be with you?”

Sirius pensively watched the street below. If he bent to Remus’ logic, he didn’t say. The ashtray clunked the wood when he tapped more ash into it. His preoccupation was clear, all movements made strictly out of memory. 

“I just—” he began. Cigarette stuffed between his lips, to tamp down the tremor, he kneaded and pulled at his hands. Tugging fingers, gouging palms and heartline, rocking the knuckles. Then, manically, he took the fag from his mouth, and said wetly, eyes glistening, “He just looks so much like James. So fucking like him, Remus. It’s all I can see when I look at him, saw it every single fucking day this summer. And knowing he’s in danger like this and—”

Overwhelmed, Sirius went back to his cigarette, shaking one leg and sniffling. Remus, still flat on his stomach, continued to watch him at the window without expression. 

“We couldn’t save James, Remus. I wanna at least save his son.” 

_But I don’t think you do,_ Remus narrowed his eyes and smoked down the last bit of his cigarette. He sat up and grabbed Sirius’ dressing gown where it had been tossed over the footboard in their haste. Shrugging it on and tying it, he stamped his cigarette out in the ashtray and stood to his full height over Sirius and kissed his forehead. 

_I think you want to save James. And sometimes when you look at Harry, it’s not Harry you see at all. The past is what keeps you up, not Azkaban, not today’s war, but yesterday’s, and if Harry makes it through, then you’ll finally be able to sleep like the dead._

“He is going to be alright, Sirius. We will make sure of that, yeah?” Remus tilted Sirius’ chin up and raised an eyebrow, awaiting his answer. Sirius nodded slowly. He winced when Remus pinched his chin, dug his thumb into the soft hollow underside of Sirius’ chin, urging more. “Whatever happens. With the world, with the war, with Voldemort. We’ll make sure it’s alright.”

“Yes,” Sirius whispered, breath catching on the ‘e’, so it cracked and barely made a sound. He tried again, nodding along. “Yes. Yes, we will.” 

“Harry has you, and you have me, and we have each other. It’s going to be fine.”

Sirius, wordlessly, nodded. 

“I just don’t want you worrying too much, that’s all.” 

“I can’t help but worry.” Sirius looked up at him with tears full and fat on his lashes. “He’s my boy.” 

“I know.” Remus took him into his arms and kissed his hair. “I know he is.”

You’re going to take Harry away, he thought, From everyone, from me. And I wouldn’t care, except in taking him as your own, he’s going to steal you just as much.


	2. Chapter 2

Every week before the full moon, Snape arrived at Grimmauld Place with the necessary Wolfsbane. He’d mix up the final bits on the kitchen table, poking at the cauldron with an iron spoon, hand on hip, quite formidable and brooding. 

Sirius made himself scarce during those visits. He was unable to reach the cool civility Remus and Snape had. 

“But you’ve had a whole year being around that creep!” he’d say, while dragging his feet around his room. “S’gotta be easier for you. I can’t stand him.” 

“He’s helping us dearly, Sirius,” Remus would answer, on the little three step landing and trying to make his way downstairs for Snape’s arrival. “Wolfsbane, the Order. He watches out for Harry, you know.” 

“More like bullies him.” 

“Not everyone shows love the same way.”

“He does not _love_ Harry. I do.”

“Yes, you do.” Remus would wrap Sirius up in his arms. The routine was impeccably predictable, as if they couldn’t go through with the dosage without the minor colorful dramatics on Sirius’ end. “And so do I. And so does Severus, and Dumbledore, and Molly and Arthur, and Hermione and Ron, and many, many other people. To different degrees and ways, but it’s all the same.”

“I don’t trust him.” 

“You don’t have to,” Remus would say, disentangling himself. “I will, and that’s that.”

And then Sirius would practically throw himself into Remus’ arms again, like a broad, and kiss him. 

“Too warm in here, Lupin?” Snape asked once, stirring the last ingredients together. 

Remus pat a hand to the flush on his cheeks. Sirius had been particularly covetous that morning, and he still ached in places. That, and the fact that Sirius had sucked him off upstairs minutes before Snape’s arrival. 

“A bit.” 

“Hmm.” Snape poured the mixture into a goblet, which he handed to Remus. “I believe you know the drill.”

Remus drank, and it was bitter and soured down his gullet.

“Better every time.” He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Snape watched him narrowly. 

“Charming.”

Remus grinned up at him. To be fair, it was the nicest conversation they’d had in a while. 

“I’ll return tomorrow. Same time.” Snape was already gathering up his things with his usual peeved disinterest. 

“Okay,” Remus said, because that about summed it all up. Then he remembered the gratitude he’d urged Sirius to share with him. “Thanks. Thank you for doing all of this.”

“On Dumbledore’s orders, Lupin.” 

“Of course.” 

And Snape left. But Remus knew a response at all was ‘you’re welcome’ enough. 

November 1995:

A good month before the Order descended upon Grimmauld Place to set up holiday camp, Sirius and Remus had the house to themselves. 

What happened? Nothing much. 

Remus left on Order missions. Sometimes he was gone in the morning and back in the evening like a normal job; other times he was gone for days on end. Sirius fervently paced the house, finding menial tasks to amuse himself with until the evening. That’s when he allowed himself to finally get down the gin from the cupboard above the stove, and drink. 

Cruelly, Remus never told Sirius when he was leaving. He just left, gone in the mornings, bed empty where it had been full the night before, bathroom door open and toothbrush still set on the sink, cleared evening dishes and deserted kitchen. 

“Why do you leave me?” Sirius asked once over breakfast. Remus, reaching for the teapot, said nothing, until Sirius pressed on. “Why do you leave without saying anything, just there one second and gone the next? I turn around and you’re gone, or you’re halfway up the steps after dinner, and then _pop!_ —” Snap of long fingers and flashing jewelry “—I’m all by myself.” 

“Making a big fuss every time I leave isn’t exactly healthy.”

“What do you mean?” 

“Goodbyes are exhausting and put everyone in quite a sentimental aching frenzy that isn’t necessary. Goodbyes have finality, and that just sets us both up for doing quite badly, don’t you think?”

“But it’s rude.”

A bit exasperated, Remus rested his wrists on the table lip, slice of toast in one hand, knife in the other, and stared Sirius down.

“But it’s necessary.”

“Why?” 

“In case I don’t come back.”

“Rubbish. You always come back.”

“So far, yes, but I can’t promise you it’ll always be that way.” 

“You’re Remus fucking Lupin,” Sirius said, pouring tea near manically, trying to pat down his panic with aggressive sensibility. “Nonsense.” 

“If I say goodbye to you each time I leave, you’ll go out of your mind. We both will. If you lose me, it’ll hurt less if you didn’t know it was going to happen.”

“It hurts my feelings.”

Remus smiled tensely. “You’re an incredibly strong person, Sirius. We’ll manage.”

“ _Manage,_ ” Sirius spat. “I hate being stuck here, you know that? It’s horrible, knowing I could be out there and helping. Instead, I’m here, keeping house and trying to feel important while shining down pots and sweeping and sorting out the _library_. Might as well give me two kids, a nice dress from Debenhams, and a few bottles of Valium and—”

“You _are_ helping. They’ve a bounty on your head, you know! You’re not a free man. Out _there_ , you’re still a murderer. Out there, you’ll get yourself killed or jailed up or something rotten. And then what would Harry have? Nothing.”

“He’d have you. And the Weasleys.”

“Harry cannot be raised by a werewolf, he’s got enough going on as it is. And the Weasleys, although I’m sure would take him in without a thought, hardly have the money to be raising another kid.”

“They can have all my money. The house. Everything. But you’d be the first, Remus. Regular Wolfsbane, a proper home. Harry can handle being on his own for a few days a month.”

“You. Are. Helping. Being here, and being around for Harry and being some stability he hasn’t had in a _long_ time, if ever.” Remus began eating, with finality, considering the conversation good as over. “And don’t kid yourself, either, Pads. You need Harry as much as he needs you.” 

***

But it was terrible. At its heart. 

There really wasn’t much to do aside from hosting the Order twice a week. Sirius started cleaning the Muggle way, because it took up more time and left him with less idle moments of boredom.

One morning, he’d taken a break from cleaning the tile in the bathroom—down on his knees and scrubbing at the grout with a toothbrush: meticulous now bordering on neurotic—and stood, stretched, catching sight of himself in the mirror. Dressed like muggle, in a dirty sweatshirt (he’d been restaining the library baseboards), with his hair half falling out of its tie from his exertion.

It was greying by the temples and over his ears. Had Remus noticed? Chose not to comment, given his own scars and tired eyes? Stress aged Remus terribly, and prison had taken a great Black son, the Belle of Gryffindor Tower, and made them both so... _old_. 

That was when he noticed the ache in his calves and on the kneecap, a deep rooted pain that no thirty-five year old should feel. 

Because of cleaning grout. 

And the day before he’d dusted down the first and second floor. 

And tomorrow was mending his clothes. By hand, because he was bored.

And the next day would be sorting through the books in the library and the study. 

And then hosting the Order, and even helping Kreacher and Molly with the cooking, and tidying up and waiting around for Remus, his love, who was out and doing things far more interesting and helpful. 

Sirius would rise early, work from dawn to dusk, unrelenting and cruel on himself, and when evening settled over London, and his stomach rumbled, signaling the time most ate dinner, he’d go down to the kitchens and pour himself a generous glass. Gin, whisky, beer some nights when it didn’t hurt as much. Wine and Alihotsy when it hurt more.   
Living poisons. 

***  
Remus spent the moons in the spare bedroom. Locked up and pacing or dozing on the big bed, sleepy and generally ill. The potion mitigated his transformation: to any Muggle or not-so-eagle-eyed witch or wizard, he would’ve looked like a real wolf. Even somebody like Hagrid might’ve been fooled if they didn’t look too closely.

Padfoot spent the turns with him, curled up with him on the bed. He’d nudge the wolf’s side with his dark snout when Remus paced too many laps with restless energy. Sometimes they snapped at one another, playful, until the wolf would yawn, fatigued again and settle on the bed with a great flopping ‘hmph’. 

This was life now, and for the first time in a long while, for the both of them, it wasn’t that bad at all. 

“How are you feeling?” Sirius whispered into Remus’ hair. Remus, who lay in bed, pale and sweating slightly, as if he had the Muggle flu. 

“Fine.” The answer was dry and weak. 

Just past noon after the Worm Moon. Come evening, Remus would feel well enough to shower and dress. For now, he lay in Sirius’ arms and fell in and out of fevered dreams. A trash bin of vomit sat next to the bed.

“Tea?” Sirius asked.

“Jasmine, please.”

“Of course.”

“Ta.”

“Toast with it?”

Remus curled tighter in bed and shook his head, face pressed into the pillow and hair unkempt. The sheets were slipping off his back, and Sirius eyed the ridged spine with mild hunger. Remus was so pitifully broken after the moon, until he built himself back up in the subsequent days, a great rebirth that never failed to amaze Sirius. 

_People don’t understand well enough._ Sirius made tea slowly and carefully, like Remus did. _Behind the jumpers and scars and hair you never comb good. And how shy you can be, quiet and kind. People are so silly to mistake your kindness for weakness, my love. You burn much brighter than my own star._

***

“You amaze me.”

Sirius and Remus were in the drawing room one bleak February afternoon. Sirius lounged on one of the small couches by the window, watching Wednesday London traffic plod along outside. 

Remus, on the drawing room’s large couch, reading the Prophet—through readers and feeling old—peered at him, only half-listening. Sirius appeared affronted he wasn’t being listened to, for he said,

“You’re really that blind?”

Remus raised his eyebrows.

“Because wolves have excellent vision, I’ve heard. Is it going for you?”

“Fine, thank you,” Remus said, against the grain of Sirius’ slightly caustic sympathy. “Doesn’t bother me during the moons.” About to return to the paper, he said disinterestedly,   
“My, are we in a mood. What’s all the attitude, Pads?”

“Because you’re not listening to me.”

Remus set the paper down, folded it gently, pushed his glasses up on his head, and sat, hands in his lap. There. Listening. 

“I said that you amaze me.” 

Remus raised an eyebrow.

“The other day, after the moon, I was making tea and thinking about you. How you go through all you do and then you just get right back on your feet and keep going.” Sirius unfolded himself from the chair, looking haggard but with the same sturdy frame he’d always had, and crossed to the couch. “With all these.” He bent and touched a finger to the white line under Remus’ left cheek. 

Remus flinched. Preying on his confusion, Sirius, in a flash, straddled his lap and tugged his jumper out from his trousers. Remus jolted and tried to push his hands away.

“No.”

“I’ve always liked them.” Sirius kissed him, one hand still running up Remus’ chest. Momentary sedation, that mouth of his, and Remus relaxed. He felt Sirius trace the scars, memorized from years of loving each other: Crisscrossed tracks by his shoulder, lashings, a thin line under his top right rib, by the breast, another line on his neck, more carved into his abdomen, around the navel, anywhere he’d cut and slashed at his own skin. 

Jaw and cheek and lip, too, and when Sirius got to those places, he kissed them tenderly. Remus whispered,

“They’re ugly.”

Sirius shook his head and nipped Remus’ freckled nose. “But I like them.” 

Remus attempted to twist out of the embrace. Sirius growled. He pressed closer, and Remus felt him through his trousers.

“Stop it. “I’m tired of you trying to hide.” 

“But—”

“You wear sweaters that don’t fit, you duck down to hide your height, it’s ridiculous.” 

The comment, contrasted to the gentle press of cock against Remus’ covered pelvis, was remarkably sweet, and Remus smiled. 

“But I need to hide.” 

“We all have to hide sometimes, Moony.” Sirius bit a spot on Remus’ neck, still pinning him, and breathed, “You don’t need to hide from me.” 

“I like this one,” Sirius licked the scar on the bridge of Remus’ nose.

Remus gulped. 

“And this one.” He got a fistful of Remus’ hair, yanked his head back and nipped at the scar skirting his lip. 

“Any others?” 

Remus grew dark. Sirius saw it rise like a storming surf, lighting far out past the coast. Amber eyes clouded, blown and hungered with lust, and chapped lips parted in breaths he couldn’t catch now. 

“I’ve one on my hip,” he whispered. 

Sirius regarded him for a moment, tracing each slant and curl and glisten, knowing that one day they’d grow old and in those hours he could forget many things, and let them go as easily as leaves off trees in autumn, but this, _this_ , needed to be clung to, immortalized no better than God’s outstretched hand to Adam. 

Then he clambered off Remus’ lap and dropped to his knees. 

Remus watched him in a calculated manner that thrilled him. Like Sirius had perhaps given an incorrect answer to a question or been eyeing other papers mid-exam and glanced up, caught in the act by an unassuming Professor who could’ve torn ever boggart and grindylow and Grim limb from limb with lupine maw and claw. Sirius, electric, realized he wanted to be torn apart, too. 

He opened Remus’ trousers greedily. His hands shook, so he dug his fingers into Remus’ thighs to ease the tremor and was promptly smacked upside the head. 

Oh, and so the mighty wolf knew, and Sirius could play prey well enough. He whimpered, whined like a dog, up into a leering smile he had never seen before. 

“You want it?” Remus murmured. He leaned close so they were almost nose to nose. Sirius nodded frantically.

“Yes.” Smokey and desperate. “Yes, yes.” He kept nodding, speechless. Remus grinned and pushed his trousers and pants off his hips.

Long, swollen, pink and perfect. Sirius moaned just at the sight, so _perfect._

Remus guided his cock into Sirius’ mouth, other hand holding his head, thumb brushing the hollow of his cheek when he sucked deep. Momentarily, he nearly pulled off, suckling the head before going all the way back down.

“ _Shit,_ ” Remus whispered. He spread his legs farther. Too hot, he ripped off his jumper and shirt, tossing them aside. Sirius sputtered, then took him further. Remus felt the tip of his prick bump Sirius’ throat. He cursed again.

For a split second, Sirius rose and gasped for breath. Then he returned, and Remus nearly came right there. Remus bent at an angle to smooth hands up Sirius’ back, gripped his neck, pet his silky hair. Without warning, he cupped Sirius’ head and started thrusting.

“C’mon, love, take it,” he hissed, when Sirius choked and grabbed blindly at his arms. Then he completely relaxed and let Remus fuck his throat. “Merlin, baby, there you go.”

Remus saw spots. 

“Pads, oh _fuck._ ”

Sirius moaned, muffled and wet. His hands disappeared. With the remaining composure Remus had, he pinched Sirius’ nose shut. Sirius choked again, spluttered and pulled off. He gazed up at Remus in a daze, watering grey eyes unfocused with lust, lips wet and red. A sticky strand of spit ran down his chin.

“Don’t fucking touch yourself. Did I say you could?”

Sirius shook his head.

“Did I say?” Remus gripped Sirius’ chin, slid up to his cheeks, and squeezed.

“No,” Sirius breathed.

“Then don’t,” and Remus, against his beauty’s open panting mouth, licked Sirius’ tongue. He shoved Sirius down onto his cock again, pinning his hands behind his back.

He kept fucking, hard and fast. Sirius gave no indication of distress; he wouldn’t pass out. Remus knew his limits, had years to learn them. He’d take it like a bitch, happily.

God, it built. A tingling sensual shake, from his groin, to right below his navel, higher and higher. The wave was coming, perfectly, he’d ride her in until she crashed. Outside, the drizzle turned to downpour, underneath the soaked sound of Sirius’ mouth around him, hot and wet, the sound of his cock down a throat, lips around him, someone fucking sucking him off, taking it like a slut and—

Remus came. His head tipped back, mouth open, groaning.

“ _Sirius…_ ”

It pulsed through him. Sirius swallowed him up, contracting and opening. Sweeter than pussy.

“Shit.” Remus returned to Earth gently, light-headed, his ears ringing. “Shit, love, that was amazing.”

Wiping his mouth and lips, Sirius grinned up at him. “Anytime, Moony.”

Remus couldn’t catch his breath, exhausted. He was spent, knocked out, wanting nothing more than to lay down on the couch. “And I didn’t even do any of the work. Sirius, you alright?” He stroked Sirius’ hair, looking into his face concernedly.

“Fantastic,” Sirius said, equally out of breath. He lifted his hair of his neck and fanned himself. “Some water?”

Remus nodded, zipped himself back up, now soft and sated, and got two glasses from the kitchen. When he came back, Sirius was still on the floor, leaning against the couch. He handed him a glass and took a seat, too.

“Damn, you still got it.”

“Like I ever lost it.” Sirius giggled when Remus put an arm around him and kissed his temple.

“Thank you.”

“Sure.”

“Um…” Remus began.

“Yeah?”

“Do you need to—”

“I’m all good,” Sirius said. Mischievously, he held up his hands and said, “No hands.”

Remus, blushed, burst out laughing. “Unbelievable. Like a teenager.”

“You said no hands.”

“Well,” Remus said, and set his water aside. He shifted onto his stomach, directly over Sirius’ crotch. “Let me at least clean it up for you.”

“Please do,” Sirius said breathlessly, putting his hands gently on Remus’ head, content. He felt fingers unzip his trousers, spread the fly wide, and—

“Shit,” he said. “I love you.”

“I love you, too. Forever.”


	3. Chapter 3

July 1965: 

The beach sang brighter than anything Remus had ever seen. 

Sun warmed strand, pebbled and hot, ran down towards the water, broken by a thin rim of glossed sand, before another wave rolled in and crashed down, racing up the beach.   
Families were scattered here and there, under yawning umbrellas, spread out on towels and surrounded by coolers and chairs and little transistor radios, tiny individual summer kingdoms. Children danced in the frothed edged of the water, fathers close behind, guarding them with watchful eyes, while mothers lounged on the sand, and cupped tanned hands over sunglasses to see their families against the blinding glint of the sun. 

Remus wanted all of it, every single bit, and he started toward the water, until a firm hand caught his arm. 

“Hold on, Remus, love.” Hope stood tall above him. Cat-eyed sunglasses hid her eyes and a wide-brimmed hat cast the top half of her face in shadow. “We gotta wait for your father, alright?”

Remus nodded, peeved she’d stopped his campaign on the water, but he smiled up at her anyways, the sun and beach and pastel day too exciting to resist. 

“You ready, Remus?” Lyall came down the paved walk from the parking lot, hoisting two chairs under his arm and a smaller cooler in the other, which he handed to his wife. Remus had never seen her in a swimsuit before, a bright pink bikini with a light cotton wrap draped over her pale shoulders. 

He’d never seen a beach before, for that matter. 

The whole spread before him was so entirely Muggle it hurt his head a bit.

Lyall seemed to struggle much the same. Certainly, he married a Muggle, who was now bounding down the sand, cooler in one hand, leading a beaming Remus along by the other. But altogether, he felt lost, like everyone who saw him noticed he did not belong, like keeping your mouth closed in another country and blatantly being a foreigner anyway. So, to that end, as they settled down a way off from everyone else and laid out their things, Lyall could only imagine how his son felt. 

Down the beach, a small group of children splashed and rolled through the waves.

Lyall saw Remus watching them, and Hope saw this, too, for she stood, tossed off her wrap and held out her hand. 

“C’mon, Remus. Let’s go down to water, alright?”

He looked first at the children, and then up at his mother and said, 

“Ok.” 

Lyall watched them go. Remus tottered on the sand slightly and clutched his mother’s fingers until he bolted into the waves. For a while, he was content, splashing and tossing his head back in great innocent laughter. A small wave caught him went down fast. Then, still laughing, he surfaced, too strong to stay down for long. He played alone for a while, contented, but not without a few glances at the other children down the beach. He gave Hope his biggest, widest eyes. She shook her head and waved him up for lunch.

Chilled sandwiches. Cold bottles of soda. Hope lay on a towel, brim over her already freckled face, where she dozed in and out of the summer day. Lyall watched the water, and Remus, little Remus, sat at his feet, packing too-dry sand into a sandcastle mold. 

“Dis it, right?” Remus poured out some sand and held the mold up to his father. “Where you went?”

“Yes.”

“And I go, too?” 

Lyall tensed. Remus had not yet shown any signs, despite the change—in itself no clear indication of magic. And signs aside, he was ill. 

“Sure, Remus.” Remus, who stared at him with big hopeful eyes. “Yes. Yes, you will. I promise you.”

He squealed and went back to scraping sand into the mold. And Lyall, sitting back in his chair, wondered what exactly he had agreed to. 

Tan and blue winked back into focus. Hope still lay on her towel, properly asleep, Lyall without the heart to wake her. He’d dozed off, too, apparently, cradled by the heat of day and overly clean breeze that wafted off the water. 

Remus was gone. 

Towel empty, castle mold nowhere in sight, gone. He shook Hope awake in a panic, where she started, up and screaming for her boy. 

They watched crowds now: in town, amid busy high streets on weekends, on beaches, now. For any tall shuffling men, too clawed and hairy for their own good. For filthy monsters who could hurt a child and still come back to finish it off. 

Hope shrieked and ran down the sand, heading for a small cluster of young boys. She threaded through them, unsatisfied until Remus was high and safe in her arms, castle tumbling from his fingers. Young pink faces stared up at her, squinched from the sun. She flushed to see how many families were staring. Staring at her, staring at her boy, because they knew. 

“What did you tell them, Remus? Huh? What did you say?” 

“Nothing, mum!” He was limp in her arms. 

“Tell me, Remus.” She set him on the sand and shook him. Suddenly the day was not so bright and new and fun. Lyall, packing up their things, saw her shake him again and winced. 

“They was just showing me how to do the sand,” he said, crying. “I was doing it wrong, they said, and so they showed me all nice. I’m sorry.”

Hope remained bent and peering into his tear streaked face. He’d begun to burn. Nothing could reach him now, for he was too distraught and heat-addled. She scooped him up again carefully, enveloping his tender skin in the white wrap. 

_From the sun_ , she told herself as they ambled back towards the car clumsily, weighed down with chairs and gritty towels. Families stared as they passed. Hope simply pulled her sniffling boy closer. _From the sun. If the scars are covered, it is merely a coincidence._

Lyall swung the car out onto the road, dusk caught in its rear window. 

A soft, well-loved map lay open on Hope’s lap, and she traced the roads and motorways and lanes the same tender way she’d often trace her son’s scars. Does tenderness make love? Does fear make reverence? 

She pointed left and Lyall turned, glancing at Remus in the rearview mirror: burnt and sandy and fighting sleep. 

They stopped for fish and chips on the beach road that ran east then north. Remus sulked through the meal, despite Hope’s best efforts. She pushed extra chips toward him and smiled a lot. Except he’d remained sullen, as much as a young boy could be, and took the food without gratitude. With the day’s scalding edge gone, he felt his own skin now, his own warmth, and realized he’d burned. Tight and itchy, pebbles in his trainers, hair salt-caked and waxy. Abysmally uncomfortable, and all he wanted to do was go home. 

So they went. 

“Long drive, love.” Hope turned to him through the space between the seats. He’d kicked off his shoes and turned a beach towel in a make-shift blanket. He met her gaze solemnly. “Get some sleep. And you can sleep all day tomorrow, too.” She grinned to make the offer enticing, to break the cold rain of his gaze. It remained, beating and banging, and she took his little hand in hers.

“I’m so sorry, love. So sorry that had to happen to you. I’m sorry I did that.” 

“S’okay,” he said quietly, and she knew it was everything but. “I am sick.” The phrase was laid down tentatively, like he was recalling a memory, and she realized he was simply repeating what he’d heard. 

“It’s just that we want you to be safe, and we want everyone to be safe, and many times, Muggles aren’t going to understand, and they can be very mean, and so—” She realized how vapid was her explanation. Her pain was unexplainable to a five-year-old, who had enough of his own pain to go around for all three of them. “Get some sleep,” she repeated, as his lids lowered, tight grip on the blanket already slackening. “You need it.” 

Lyall, turning onto the motorway, held her hand. She’d taught him to drive on the wide dirt road behind their home, showing him the gear-shift and ignoring his protests of “we’ll just floo!” while the baby kicked low in her belly. She’d been so happy, so happy, not caring whether it was going to be the best little magical child ever or a proper Muggle like its mum. Now she locked doors and windows three times over and loved a black, moonless night like it was another child of her own. 

They said nothing to one another then. Hope cranked down the window and leaned out to let the wind unknot her sea-brittle hair. Thickets on each side of the road, dark blue in the evening haze, buzzed and whirred, and she watched them turn to a muddled blur as the car got up to speed. 

The wind made her eyes water. At least that was what she told herself. Ahead, the moon rose, waxing, and Remus was fast asleep in the back.

***

The third of December. Cold and dark. The house creaked and settled in Sirius’ bones. He spent the entire day on the third floor, clearing through the many old charmed antiques Orion and Walburga had collected over the years: dragonwood chests full of musty dark magic books, an old armoire that rattled from the small goblin inside. Sirius knew because he’d checked before trying to open it and didn’t think he could deal with the creature by himself. Because he was alone. All the time now. Solitary and unable to leave the house he’d been locked up in.

He wondered why everyone was so happy he’d gotten out of prison. He wondered what had changed. 

By four, it snowed. The house was too large to heat entirely by charms, and Sirius threw an overcloak over his jumper. Then he set down his work for the day, retreated to kitchens, and made a fire.

Kreacher knew to remain scarce at night. That was when Master Black got funny. Funny in a strange way, strange in a way Kreacher didn’t understand. Sometimes he shouted and smashed things, sweating and dark eyed, half-bottle gone. Other times he sat at the table, staring into the fire and silent for hours. Other times, he shook with sobs and smoked and the whole room dimmed a little. 

Tonight, Sirius made the fire by hand and tried to eat, rooting uninterestedly in the icebox through some of the leftovers Molly always wrapped up after Order meetings. As he warmed foil-covered lasagna over the fire and poured another glass of wine, he wondered where Remus was. What part of the world he walked through. Was it evening there, too? Did he need an overcloak like the one Sirius wore now? Did he eat, too, when out on missions and alone? Sirius hoped so. Remus wasn’t remarkably great at taking care of himself; peppermint tea and the occasional chocolate square did not constitute meals, especially since he needed far more energy than a Muggle or wizard would. He had the beast to feed.

Where was he now? Under Moroccan stars or across Texan deserts or the winter-bitten Poland? Ireland, Kenya, New Zealand? A whole wheel of places, the entire fucking world, and Sirius only got three stories and a basement. 

There was an old Fitzgerald album on the record player, Remus’. Sirius replaced it with a Bowie album and turned it loud so he could hear it in the kitchen. 

Then he danced alone. Slopped wine when he twirled and shook his hair loose from it’s plait. When it got too warm, he let himself sweat and pushed through the ache of the day.

_You’re in pain. Because you’re moving. Because you can get up and dance and drink your wine and learn to feel again. Never forget that. Be grateful._

***

“Could I,” Remus asked, while he sat and watched Snape mix up the Wolfsbane, one dreary Monday afternoon, “confide in you something?”

Christmas was a few weeks away, and Harry would be coming to Grimmauld Place soon.

Snape raised one eyebrow and kept stirring the cauldron. Unsure if this was an invitation to continue, Remus paused. Then, irritated, Snape said,

“Yes?”

“Sirius, um,” Remus wrung his hands, “Sirius got the Grim.”

Snape said nothing. He kept stirring.

“I already told Albus, who told Sybill, so I suppose now it isn’t really _confiding_ , but—”

“Your point, Lupin?”

“Sybill doesn’t think it’s going to end well. And I left quite rudely, because I didn’t like her answer, and I don’t even know why I’m telling you all of this…” Remus trailed off. He stared at Snape with an unguarded gaze. “I didn’t know who else to tell.”

Snape looked at him, and then ladled out the potion into a goblet.

“Because I can’t tell Sirius, he’d lose his mind. It’s his own omen. And telling Harry or any of the children is absolutely out of the question.”

“Molly?” Snape said absentmindedly. He slid the cup towards Remus, who drank.

“They don’t see eye to eye, really. The last thing she needs is hearing he’s got it. She’s been looking for a decent excuse to take Harry away, and if anything would work, it’d be the Grim.”

“And yet you are content to keep Harry in Black’s care, even if he does, as you so say, have the Grim?”

“The Grim is bullshit. It’s ridiculous to disrupt everyone because of it.”

“You just said that it worried you.”

“It does!”

Snape smirked at him. Remus wanted to scream.

“Look,” he said, “I don’t know what to do about it. It’s nonsense, I know, but if something happened after I disregarded it, I’d feel terrible.”

“Then _do_ something.” Snape began collecting his things. “If you are so concerned.”

“But it’s insane!”

“Then don’t.” He didn’t even look up.

“But that’s irresponsible!”

“Divination,” muttered Snape, “is the comfort for the irrational, the religion of the illogical. It’s what plebeians do in the face of uncertainty. We, Remus,” this was the first time Snape had ever said his first name, “are academics, are we not?”

“Yes.”

“Not fools?”

“No.”

“Then we have no need for lunatic methods of living our lives, yes?”

Remus felt like a pupil. Scarily, it was working.

“No, we don’t.”

“Precisely,” Snape said, smooth and quiet. All his things gathered and put away in the little bag he’d brought with him, he brushed his robes. He gave Remus one more glance. “If you have the cup—”

“I do.”

Snape’s eyes flared at being interrupted. “If you have it, destroy it. Keeping it means you think it’s worth something.”

Then he left. And Remus, before he could stop himself and spiral back into his anxieties, found the cup where he’d hidden it in the cupboard above the oven, transfigured into a bottle of mandrake oil, and smashed it on the hearth. 

***

Remus’ hands pinched Sirius’ neck slightly each time he tugged gently at a knot so as not to jerk his head around too much: the snug bite of a mother carrying her pups.

Remus kneeled behind him, naked on the bed, meticulously brushing his hair. Sirius had wanted to leave it sex-snared, signs of being claimed, but Remus had grabbed the brush before he could protest.

In the darkness, half-lit with ambient waning-moonlight through the window: a new scar, Sirius noticed, ran neatly along the underside of Remus’ jaw, perfectly straight with the bone. He had a sudden urge to kiss it. Instead, he said,

“You’ve a new scar there” and touched his index finger to the mark.

“Harz Mountains, in ‘91,” Remus said, setting the brush down and running his fingers through Sirius’ hair, checking for any missed or overly pernicious knots. “Ran into an actual pack of wolves,” a little smile and laugh, “who proved quickly enough not to be as friendly as they seemed.” 

“Trying to make new friends, Remus?” It was out before Sirius could stop himself. What had—to his own ears, in his own head, sounded witty—came out caustic. His heart sank, and he waited for cold fire to rain down, the sharpened bright cruelty Remus was certainly capable of.

Except Remus said nothing in response. He just kept pulling his fingers through Sirius’ hair, over and over again. When Sirius looked up at him, to look him in the eye and see the truth, nothing but warmth awaited him. 

He could kiss Remus, if he wanted. Just sit up a little straighter and press mouth to mouth and feel the entire universe tumble back into him. The universe he’d spent twelve whole tortured years thinking about, reaching for common room nights with James—full of whisky and too warm and foolishly happy—and failing; reaching for James’ and Lily’s wedding day and failing, reaching for holding little Harry for the first time and failing; reaching for Remus, sun-drunk and properly fucked on the floor of the Shrieking Shack and not failing at all, by any means. 

Remus was what kept him from getting too cold when the Dementors drew near; Remus was sanity. Remus was all to him, creation and destruction in one thunderclap, the ash that drew Sirius up and the ash he would crumble back down to; the heat in his bones, long after they lost his flesh and rattled Earth’s dirt and dust

Remus had spent twelve years thinking Sirius a murderer, painting over old memories with a new brush. 

Late common room nights, all four of them drunk and blissfully happy. Sirius would toss him little glances over the bottle whenever he drank from it, smiling over the lip and Remus would blush and look away, happy for once to have a secret he wasn’t ashamed of. 

James and Lily’s wedding, seated next to Sirius the entire evening, staring up at him as they toasted the newlyweds or the blissful danger of Sirius’ slender hand skating up his inner thigh under the table. 

Holding Harry for the first time in St. Mungo’s while James and Lily slept, and Sirius sidling up to his shoulder, both of them peering down at the little baby, thinking him perfect, and that perhaps, to a passerby, it was their own child they held. 

And then Sirius went and murdered Remus’ entire world. 

Or didn’t. And Remus had a hard time undoing twelve years of heartbreak. 

“Tired?” he asked with a broad smile. He set the brush down.

“Wiped out. You fuck good, honey.”

It elicited the reaction he’d hoped for: Remus laughed loudly, and pulled them both onto the mattress, under the covers.

Together, back to chest, one flesh. Breath that drew and released simultaneously. Perfect harmony Sirius never had with anyone else, now that he considered it. Not even James.

“You were my first, you know.”

“Hm?” 

Remus understood that whatever Sirius had just said was mildly important. But the bed was warm, so much warmer than the townhouse, especially with Sirius holding him and kissing a trail down his spine. 

“I said,” Sirius slithered up and sucked the tendered spot below Remus’ ear. In a slippery whisper, “You were my first.” 

“Mine, too.”

“And we were together until Azkaban.” 

Sirius’ implication began to reach Remus, however hard it was to imagine. Of all of them, Sirius had been the prettiest. Coupled with the fact that he knew how gorgeous he was, Remus always figured he’d been unstoppable. 

_“Need me to carry your books, Sirius?”_

_“I’ve got the Charms answers if you want them, Sirius.”_

_Girls gaped at him when he passed, even the Slytherin ones. Boys did, too, Remus always noted, as much as they tried to hide it. Once or twice, he’d even caught_ James _staring. It was never lustful; it was simply that you couldn’t_ not _stare. Sirius never got detectably smug under the attention, just glowed a little bit more and would say kindly,_

_“Thanks, but Remus’ got me.”_

_And then Remus, either handing over homework or happily carrying Sirius’ things, would beam and wonder how someone so beautiful could fall in love with a monster._

“Was I really the only one?” Remus rolled over. With a small smile, he brushed away the hair to kiss Sirius’ forehead. “I always figured, what with your charms…”

“You underestimate yourself.”

“Huh?” 

“Why would you ever think I’d go for someone else?”

“Why not? You were more than capable.”

“But we were together.” Sirius frowned.

“Yeah, but that was just the last few years. I just always figured, in the beginning, you know...I was good fun, but nothing…”

“Remus, I couldn’t imagine doing anything with anyone else. Everyone else is quite unattractive and quite stupid and quite not-Moony at all.”

There’d always been a curl of jealousy, now that Remus gave it proper thought, to see the way boys and girls stared at Sirius. Or tried to muscle between the two of them with clueless presumption, smitten and falling over themselves. And fear. Fear of not knowing what Sirius got up to when he wasn’t around. Fear that he cared too much, and that Sirius didn’t.

Or that he was simple rich-boy entertainment, something to screw when bored. Such fears were ridiculous, he reminded himself often. Ungrounded. Because he really didn’t have any evidence. And when Sirius cornered him behind the canvas of the quidditch stands and pressed him hard against the wooden beams and _kissed_ him, one hand holding his jaw and the other shoved down his robes, the idea of _anyone else_ was absurd. But that’s probably what everyone else was telling themselves, too…

So adult Remus got to whisper back to teenage Remus that he really had been the only one, and the thought was so relieving, weight off his chest, that he pinned Sirius to the mattress and kissed the life right out of him. Because sometimes, despite all the words books had given him and his apparent knack to “profess”, words just didn’t cut it.


	4. Chapter 4

December 1995:

Christmas was a tense time. 

For most crowded inside Grimmauld Place, the season brought a cheerful mood. Arthur was at St. Mungo’s and doing well. Mrs. Weasley was happy to have all her children together. Hermione insisted that Kreacher be given a break from his duties, and although Sirius protested awfully for a bit, she eventually coerced him into helping her, Ron, and Harry and the younger Weasleys put up decorations. 

At first, he refused. Fred and George levitated a ladder around the first floor. Then Ron got out boxes of garlands and tinsel and Ginny, unafraid of heights like Hermione, scurried up the ladder and string the decorations all around. 

It looked fun, as Hermione charmed into existence snow dustings that never melted, and Harry—when her back was turned—charmed them again, to make them roll themselves up into snowballs that occasionally lobbed themselves at whatever poor unsuspecting soul they wanted. 

Then Sirius gave in and joined them, happy to finally be _part_ of something. 

Remus stopped in when he could. When the Order didn’t have him out doing things. Up in the Highlands or along the Amalfi or down in Bordeaux or even once as far as Casablanca.

He was happy to see Sirius so excited. He was happy to see Sirius at all. As the year had worn on, they’d seen less and less of each other, and it was only a matter of time before Sirius lost his patience and got sad, and then after sadness, he’d no doubt get angry. 

But now, Grimmauld looking the brightest it ever had, draped in garlands and plants and candlelight and deep reds and greens, a proper Victorian Christmas, with an old charmed phonograph in the drawing room corner, spinning out Muggle carols, Sirius found he had no place for sadness. Harry was here, as he would be during breaks and over the summers, and the house’s many guests beat out the maleficent gloom Walburga had reigned during Sirius’ childhood. 

***

Fred and George were in the kitchen, rooting through the pantry on the pretense of helping their mother find needed ingredients for biscuits. Molly had gone upstairs for a few minutes, and during that time, they’d abandoned their given task and were now searching for any leftover bottles of Ogden’s and fun little stashes they figured someone like Sirius might’ve hidden. 

“Alihotsy’s wicked, man,” Fred said to George. “Really bad for you if you don’t prep it good first, but I’ve heard if you dry it out and get it rolled well, it’s pretty great.”

“You sure he’d have something like that here?” George asked, rummaging under the sink. 

“Sure!” Fred said excitedly. “C’mon, he’s way cooler than Bill.”

“Or Charlie.”

“Or both. What else he got to do? Gotta be pretty bored here. I’d take school over being cooped up in this place.” He thought briefly of Walburga’s portrait and shuddered. 

“You’d take Umbridge over this?”

“I said _school_ , Georgie. Not hell.”

“ _Never!_ ” they roared in joyous unison. 

Then the Floo flared high, and Remus Lupin fell onto the hearth. 

“Professor!” They immediately dropped their looting and rushed over to him. Remus was feeling fine, only a tiny bit light-headed from the Floo, but he let the twins help him up anyway. 

“Fred and George, how lovely to see you both.” Remus smiled down at them and dusted some soot off his robes.

“You look good, Professor! Ya been at the beach lately?”

“We were just trying to find some stash, Professor. You know where any of it is?”

“Sirius’ll be wild to see you. He was asking Mum about you last night.”

“They’re not even fighting lately, it’s pretty nice.”

The questions and exclamations came all at once, overlapped and layered, as the twins continued to brush him off. Finally, Remus laughed, loud and wide, and raised a silver-scarred hand to silence their barrage.

“I was, in fact, somewhere more southern.” He patted his face and then stared at the little bit of color on his hands. “Apt judgement, lads. And,” he said, ruffling his hair back into place, “I’m pleased to hear Sirius and your mother haven’t been fighting. We can get back to all of that after the holidays.”

They laughed. 

“C’mon,” George said, “You gotta see the house! We’ve been decorating all week.”

“You’ve done work?” Remus joked.

They led him into the first-floor hallway. And they were right; they _had_ decorated. The place shown, snow-flecked and glittering. Tinsel twined up the banister and disappeared around the corner. The less-gorgeous portraits had been covered in velvet, and bouquets of fir and ornaments and charmed frozen reeds were tied to the frames. London snow clouded the windows and made the place feel just shy of _cozy_. 

Far off, music played, and on every floor, Remus heard a various chorus of voices calling back and forth. 

Life. 

Grimmauld Place felt alive, a happy home full of a happy patchworked family. It was the sort of place you wanted to spend time in. Quite nicer than his own dingy cottage. 

“You’ve still got your room upstairs, Professor,” George said. 

“Okay,” Remus said. His own room. With a good bed and its own bathroom. He could shower, wash off the dirt and exhaustion of traveling and grueling Order work, sleep for a while. The whole house was so content. He wanted to ease back into her peace like a hot bath. 

“You gotta be tired,” Fred added. Remus nodded. 

“Could you tell Sirius I’m here? I’ll be upstairs.”

He left them at the bottom of the steps. The climb ached his bones, but he welcomed it, knowing the shower and bed would feel even better. Maybe he should eat a little. Sometimes he forgot to want to eat. Food, such a luxury between the wars, when no respected witch or wizard would hire a werewolf to put food on the table.

Oh, and they’d decorated his room, too. 

Evergreen boughs crossed over the dresser. A deep red quilt laid on the bed like a runner, and charmed twinkling Muggle lights were fastened around the window. Little things, but he’d been thought of. And over the open bathroom door, a small bundle of mistletoe.

“That was my idea,” said a voice behind him. 

They hugged for a long time, each thinking that if they let go, the other might collapse. Sirius had dashed across the room and nearly toppled his lover, nuzzling at his scarred neck. Big hands ran up and down his back, smoothing the green velvet robes he wore, and then to his hair, a bit past his shoulders now. 

The night before, drunk on festivities and happiness and a bit too much liquor to quell Remus’ absence, he’d let Ginny braid his hair when it was damp out of the shower. And now it had a gorgeous shiny wave. Had he preened that morning? Hoping his love would return? No. 

They swung and swayed from foot to foot, still hugging. Whole again. 

Remus pulled back when Sirius tried to kiss him. 

“Not now,” he said, eyeing the open door over Sirius’ velvet clad shoulder. “Tonight.” He glanced back, smiling wickedly. “Tonight, Pads,” he whispered low and happy. “I’ll have you then.”

“You like the mistletoe?” Sirius changed the subject, unhurt but still impatient. He flopped down on the bed and rummaged for the stored pack of cigarettes in the bedside.

“Lovely touch.” Remus smiled, shrugging off his overcloak. He went to the dresser and pulled out fresh clothes. All his movements were lazy and measured, and Sirius wondered how everything he did was with such grace. “The house looks beautiful.”

“Thanks. I helped.”

“Well, it’s splendid. Really cheers up the place.”

“Figured it needed it. Figured we all did.” Then, “I missed you.”

“Missed you, too.” Remus took off his shirt and went into the bathroom, combing any snarls out of his short hair. He looked at Sirius through the doorway, still lounging and smoking. The robes foiled his eyes perfectly. Grey and green and so prettily rich. Sometimes he forgot that Sirius was an aristocrat, however much Sirius denied it. That and the fact that Walburga’s pureblood boy had been fucking a half-blood werewolf his entire life.

“Nice robes.” He took a folded towel from under the bathroom sink and set it on the closed toilet seat. Another smaller towel hung off the lip of the tub, which he laid open on the tile. “They really compliment your eyes.”

“You noticed?” 

“So humble.” Remus smiled affectionately, shrugging off his trousers. “They’re new.”

“Nah, they were Reggie’s. Had to charm them a little to fit but all the other stuff I had was getting to be a bore.”

“A bore,” Remus laughed. “Not as boring as prison robes, I hope.”

It was out of his mouth before he could stop himself. In his head, it had actually been a bit funny. 

Sirius went slack-jawed, shocked. Hands on mirrored cabinet, about to replace the comb, Remus froze. Something cold bloomed at the back of his neck and slid down his spine, even as his cheeks and ears burned. 

“I am so sorry—”

“It’s fine.” 

“No, it’s not.”

“We gotta laugh at ourselves, Moony. Too dark a time right now to not make a few jokes.”

“Yes, but—”

“Stop it. It’s molly-coddling.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright, love.”

“It isn’t, but thank you.”

“Of course. Now get in that shower and then take a rest. As lord of this house, I’m ordering you to do it.” Perfectly quipped, but the slight accompanying grin didn’t reach grey eyes.

“Yessir.” A light salute to the brass, and a laugh, and Remus climbed into the running shower, naked and broad and tanned. But he did so alone, unwatched and momentarily unwanted. 

Something new occupied the house. Or maybe just Remus’ bedroom. Or not a tangible place, but the small place between them, carved out in equal by everything that had ever happened to them since they were eleven, young and meeting for the first time. 

Something cold, a struck tuning fork that rang stark, a shifted bone, a new river bend, or like the first day of winter, where leaves once gold now hung bleak, and the breeze bit at fingers. 

For a long time, Sirius laid on the bed and listened to the shower run. Remus’ words repeated themselves quietly in his head, an insidious whisper

 _He believes it’s funny. It amuses him. He made a joke about it._ And then Sirius was all the way back before the Wizengamot, slipping hands clutching for his baby, and no one grabbed for him in return. 

November 1981:

_“November the Fifth, nineteen-eighty one. Sirius Black, charged with thirteen counts of murder, through implementation of the Blasting Curse, charged with two additional counts of murder by undermining the Fidelius Charm used to protect James Potter, Lily Potter, and their son Harry Potter, and collusion with and service to Lord Voldemort.”_

Before the Wizengamot, Sirius is frightfully small. He sits alone on the little bench, shackled and drowning in an ill-fitting prison uniform. The thought nearly makes Remus, who’s seated off in the little gallery, laugh. Sirius’ gaze darts around from his hands, to the raised bench of elegantly-robed witches and wizards peering down at him, and then to Remus. Sitting alone, arms crossed, tired and grieving and sad and smug all at once.

Except Remus won’t look at him, and Sirius wants desperately to start crying. 

They don’t normally allow spectators for such a precarious case. They don’t even normally allow them for minor infractions or civil affairs. Except it had been Dumbledore who’d guided Remus down to the chamber that morning, and that explained just about all that needed to be. 

The Minister of Magic ceases talking, and then someone else just as supposedly-important and expensively-dressed is speaking. Remus tunes most of it out, unsure of the need for a trial itself, until they get to the part of the trial calling up council for the defense and the room goes silent, a gaping space where help should be offered. 

Sirius squirms and whirls to look at Remus.

Remus still refuses to meet his eyes. The chains rattle as Sirius curls his hands into fists and shakes them, silently pleading Remus to do something. Anything. 

Remus just leans back on the bench and crosses his arms even tighter. The ends of his sweater are fraying, a hole forming at the inner crook of the elbow. Yet it wards off the chill enough from the Dementors swirling high on the ceiling. Sirius glances up, sees the roiling rotting black mass spinning around, and his eyes fill with tears.

“Those in favor of clearing all charges?” 

It’s an absurd question; not a single hand goes up.

“Those in favor of conviction?” 

And not a single hand stays down. 

Suddenly, the trial is over. Abruptly over. Unfairly over, and Remus watches Sirius fall apart. 

“Wait, no!” Sirius tries to get up, except his ankles are shackled and it’s pathetically funny. “No, please! I didn’t do it! I didn’t…”

Two guards, trailed by Dementors, cross the chamber to unhook his chains. He fights them, flails and struggles, and then, finally, starts sobbing. 

“I didn’t do it, I swear to you, I swear, I didn’t! No, please, please, I’m innocent.”

The guards begin to drag him off towards Remus, who sits conveniently between the defendant’s bench and the exit. 

“I wouldn’t do _itttt._ ” It drags into a helpless sob. Even Remus, who is livid beyond imaginable, knows it’s gut-wrenching. “No, I wouldn’t kill—” Sirius cannot get through it without choking. “—James.” 

Sirius begins a new chorus of wet howls, as if understanding for the first time that James is really dead. Now he stands directly in front of Remus. Gasping and clawing for him, spindly fingers scrambling against the wooden banister, trying to climb over it, to safety, to Moony’s strong arms. 

He gets a fleeting grip on Remus’ sleeve and sputters.

“Remus, please. Remus, look at me. I couldn’t have done it. You know I couldn't. It was Peter! Peter did the whole damn thing, and now he’s gone, and—” Clutching for Remus like a leper to the Lord. “I didn’t do it. Remus, please, don’t let them takemeawaytothatplaceandkillmelikethey’regonnabecauseiknowthey’regonnaMoonydarlingpleasedosomething. Help me.” 

And Remus—staring down at that tear-streaked terrified young face and wondering how someone he’d befriended, someone he’d fucked, someone he’d _loved_ could put on such an unflinching show, an utter rape to James’ memory—does absolutely nothing. 

*** 

“You’re tan.”

Remus, washing up, paused at the sink.

“Yes.”

“Where’d you go?” Sirius sat on one of the benches around the table, finishing his drink. Most of the Order had gone home, and those that remained were in the drawing room. They were all laughing loudly, undercut by chatter and Christmas records. 

“I don’t think I can tell you that.” He smiled small. 

“You don’t have to tell me what you were _doing._ ”

“Casablanca, then.” 

“Really?”

“Yes,” Remus said, amused. He turned to Sirius, who smiled back happily, raised his glass, and said in his best American accent, 

“Here’s to looking at you, kid.”

“Ah, how funny, Pads.” But it touched him sweetly, and amid platonic theatrics in front of the Order, reminded him of their love. 

“It’s not funny. It’s apt. We are at war, you know.”

“Well, yes, I suppose we are.” Remus wiped his hands on the dish towel. He downed the final sip of wine from the glass Sirius handed him and rinsed it out. Sirius got both hands on the counter, trapping Remus in and leaned close up into his face. 

“Happy Christmas, mate.”

“Mmh, Happy Christmas to you, too, lad.” And they kissed, sweet, and separated, laughing and leaning into each other. 

“I like you like this,” Sirius said, admiring Remus’ face. 

“What, not pale and a bit peaky?”

“Loose and warmed.”

“I was a sick child, mind you. Never got much sun.”

“Yes, but now you’re my soldier.”

A raised eyebrow. “Am I?”

“Sure. And I’m the poor dame left at home.” 

They wandered dangerously close to their grievances.

“Aw, you and half the entirety of Britain, love.”

“Since when?”

“About fifty years past.”

“Ah,” Sirius breathed, understanding now.

“But now that Harry’s home, do you see what I mean? About him needing you?”

“Yes.” Sirius nodded along with Remus. Remus, who couldn’t hide a proud surprised smile at Sirius admitting he’d been initially off-the-mark. “But!” Sirius held one long ringed index finger to Remus’ lips, smiling, too. “It’s still hell being cooped up here. Never you forget that.”

“I won’t. I know it’s difficult, believe me when I say that.”

“How can I?” Sirius put a hand on Remus’ chest with sincerity. 

“Because we all have our very own prisons. Each person, everywhere in the world. They look different to each and sometimes they change, but we all have them.”

Sirius scowled.

“I don’t say that to diminish your pain, Sirius. Just that it’s true and I am sorry you feel alone.”

“I am!”

“By day, you are, I know.” Remus hugged him tightly and buried his face in Sirius’ hair, dark and smooth and smelling like smoke and peppermint shampoo. “So alone. But you’re loved, Sirius. Harry, and everyone else out there—” They heard, from the other room amongst the mumble of chatter, Bill’s great barking laugh, and a shriek that resembled Ginny’s, “—and me.”

Sirius squeaked when Remus bit his neck. A hand ran the length of his back, then down lower, and squeezed.

“Oh, but now you’ve made it positively randy! Remus Lupin!” Laughing, Sirius pushed himself away. 

“I just don’t like to see you so sad.” Remus bit his lip. “It darkens your eyes.” He reached out and took Sirius’ face in broad hands. 

Sirius squinted, embarrassed and suddenly worried every new imperfection was showing. Deeper lines around the mouth, crow’s feet cut by the lashes, the greying at his temples and hairline.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?”

Remus looked confused.

“Huh?”

“The grey. Is it noticeable?”

“What? Oh, this.” Remus, long fingered and tilting Sirius’ head from side to side, smiled. “I think it’s pretty. Quite dignified.”

“It makes me look old.”

“It makes you look like you’re in charge.” Remus kissed his forehead. “Blondes look so dull when they go grey. But black hair goes out nicely. It’ll be like your eyes.”

“But I feel _old._ ”

“We all do. Age doesn’t always come from a number, Pads. Merlin knows we’ve all been through enough to last us lifetimes. Imagine how poor Harry feels.”

“He’s been having nightmares, you know.” Sirius slunk back to his seat. Remus wiped down the inside of the sink. “And visions. Like how he found Arthur.”

“Did you tell Albus?”

“Yes,” Sirius said. “Immediately. It scares me.”

Remus was pleased to hear he’d at least told someone. It was the adult thing to do. Because Harry was a _child_. Expected to be cared for by an _adult_.

“He caught me in the kitchen the other night,” Sirius continued. “Mighty close one, that was. I was just about to go back up to bed and if he’d come into our room instead of down here…”

“You left?”

“You were asleep. I got a quick drink to put me out, and he comes down here, sweating and shaking, poor lad.”

“So he had a nightmare?”

“Yes. About Diggory, I think. He says they’re all the same after a while. The Cup, Peter, the damned snake, even his mum and James. Dumbledore mentioned beginning Occlumency lessons with Harry. After Christmas.”

“That’s smart,” Remus said. “Even if it’s just for Harry’s peace of mind.” 

“Dumbledore said,” Sirius began disdainfully, “that Snivellus—”

“ _Severus._ ”

“—would teach him privately. Away from the other students. Dumbledore, with good reason, I believe, thinks that letting on to the rest of the school that Harry’s been having nightmares about Voldemort wouldn’t do good to keep the peace.” He paused, sneering at his shoes, disgusted. “Private lessons. With that creep.”

“We’ve been over this, yes?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sirius waved him away. “‘He’s doing us loads, Pads!’. ‘What would we do without him, Sirius? Consider that, please, why don’t you?’” 

His impression of Remus was droll, and Remus burst out laughing. For now, he would ignore the rage that undoubtedly now simmered inside Sirius over Snape’s Occlumency lessons. 

“He nearly came into our room?” Remus whispered after a moment. 

“Most likely.” Sirius crossed his legs, drummed his fingers on his knees for a moment of idle fidget, then dug into his jacket for cigarettes.

“Why didn’t you make me _leave?_ ”

“Ah, yeah, I’m gonna make fuck yourself on my cock and then kick you out of my bed. Really great host I’d be then.”

Remus burned red. 

“C’mon!” Sirius yelled, smiling mid-drag and smug. “You fell asleep, and I couldn’t wake you when you were all in my bed. Hot and all broad and keeping me safe.” He stood and sidled back over, pressing indecently close. Remus’ eyes flicked to the doorway, checking, but Sirius clucked his disappointment at such skittish nature and forcefully guided Remus’ marred face back down to his. Then, rasped with smoke, “My _man._ ”

“You’re dirty.” 

“Easier to call me names when your mouth isn’t full.” 

“Christ.” And Remus dove to meet his mouth and claim him. 

He was like the great beast inside him, Sirius thought. Silent and smooth until pushed too far, and then a flash of teeth, and down went the dog that circled him. 

***

There was a reason, Remus realized, as to why Sirius fixated on their time apart. Why he always asked what Remus was up to, and what he did for the Order.

The realization came to him one night, quite late, after the rest of the house had gone to bed, even Sirius, and Remus had gone downstairs for the kitchens, in search of tea to cure the mild insomnia that currently plagued him. In the drawing room, the fire still burned, and Remus, with his mug of chamomile, settled himself into one of the armchairs positioned in front of the hearth.

_Where do you go when you’re gone?_

A question so often repeated it had become like prayer.

Obsessed.

Unsatisfied with whatever answer Remus gave, even though it was always the truth. But why?

Oh.

_Oh._ He’d forgotten.

August 1994:

“What did you do,” Sirius asks, “after the war?”

They’re in Remus’ small bed, at the Yorkshire cottage. It is their fourth night together, lying low, and togetherness is still exciting, sex electrifying, like when they’d been young.

“What did I do?” Remus repeats. He gets a tighter arm around Sirius.

“Yeah, after.”

“Many things,” Remus says. “Odd jobs, things I began but couldn’t keep up with due to the moons.”

“That had to be terrible.” Solemn and sweet. 

“Oh, it was.” Remus smiles wryly, and another mouth reaches up to touch his. Then as an afterthought, “Scary, too.”

“Yeah? How so?”

For a moment, Remus pauses. Only then does Sirius realize what he has stumbled into. He remains, one hand on Remus’ chest, staring up at him in worry.

“I did a lot of things I didn’t want to.”

“You—”

“You’ll do anything when you’re that hungry. At first it was just for Wolfsbane. It was incredibly expensive when it first came out.”

“So you…” Sirius begins to understand.

“I’m not proud of it, never think that. But I was starving some nights and—”

“Did you ever get hurt?”

A blank stare is his answer, and Sirius wants to cry.

_1985:_

_On a bleak night, Remus stands amid a narrow towering lane, Old Tudor buildings stacked up, built up, ancient and tall. Still standing and never bombed down in the war._

_Snow, pinched and fast, falls and it stings his cheeks. Small tiny little flicks to the skin. Down the cobblestone lane, the_ Kneipe _door opens. Remus can barely see through the night, as three stumbling men spill onto the street and start staggering home._

_One man heads Remus’ way. He nearly misses Remus, who’s shrunk into the shadows like some haunt. Then he notices, stops, hands shoved deep in his coat. They eye each other carefully, measuring intentions. The man’s pretty enough, Remus thinks. Pale and tinged gaunt at the hour, but still pretty, with black waves that spill out from underneath the jacket hood and a glint to his gaze from the drink._

_The man approaches and offers Remus a cigarette. He matches Remus in height; for some reason that’s comforting. Huddled together against the evil wind, they say nothing. The man watches Remus smoke, eyes him darkly, like he’s nothing more than something to bag, to pull, something to pounce and pin._

“Kommt,” _he says softly. Remus exerts his own power._

_“No.”_

_The man, surprised at the accent and the lip, laughs._

_“Ah, an Englishman. Very well. Come, then. Let us get you a warm bed.”_

_The bed is not warm for long._

_Hans, as the man had so originally introduced himself, is sweet during their love, almost reverent, as if he can tell that Remus is something different than just a man. Like he can feel the beast humming under Remus’ flesh. A beast waiting patiently to rip open his scars again and_ run.

_Then, when they’re finished, he smacks at Remus, who’s slumped into the bed, exhausted and starved and just wanting a couple hours of sleep._

“Steht auf!” _he snarls, and Remus understands well enough. He’s shoved next, out of bed, where he scrabbles for his clothes, naked and shivering and still aching down below._

_“Alright!” he says dimly, half-asleep. “I’m going.”_

_“How much?” Hans asks, already getting ready to shower. Usually, with the nicer ones, he’s invited to join, or at least allowed some time on the bed, not ran out and discarded no different than the rubbers the men always use._

_That shouldn’t matter these days. Perhaps for them, but not for Remus. Muggles can get sick; werewolves aren’t susceptible to the virus._

_“Hundred Marks,” Remus mumbles, zipping up the coat he’d transfigured from robes._

“Hau ab! _Fifty.”_

_“Seventy-five.”_

_“Seventy.”_

_“God, you don’t bargain with me.” Hans rushes him, starts beating him, clawing at him, and suddenly, with a chromatic flash, Remus realizes he’s got a knife._

_It grazes him narrowly, by the forehead, because he’s had years of learning how to fight, and deep down, men are no match against wolves. Except Remus hasn’t eaten in days and he’s tired. So right now, they’re dead even._

_How quickly it has spiraled into terror._

_The man swipes again, and Remus catches his arm, yanking and twisting. The blade rips open his shirt sleeve, draws a line of hot red down his forearm. He’s sweating, using all he has to stave ‘Hans’ off, blearily knowing that he’s here to kill. If he can._

_Scared. Drunk. Ashamed for acting on his vices, all of them. Disgusted._

_Blunt agony bursts through Remus’ shoulder, a heavy firework, and he realizes he’s been stabbed. Hans jerks, yanks out the knife, and moves to stab again._

_Then, in a muddled haze, opaque as the winter night outside, Remus gathers all his remaining strength, and Apparates._

_Freezing cold. Windier than Bavaria even._

_The ground melts under his boots, sinks down a bit, sludgy, and the smell of salt, of winter rot, fills his nose. In the dark, without even opening his eyes, for he’d collapsed on the strand, bleeding and exhausted, Remus knows where he is._

_The beach. The one’d his parents had taken him to when he was only five. Where his mother had carried him into the ocean and played games with him._

_Except now it’s January, and Remus still plays games, but ones that are far scarier and not for children, and he’s got no one strong holding him up, carrying him to safety, and he’s so so hungry._

_“Lumos.”_

_His wand illuminates a single patch of beach, glistened and slick at his feet. Rust colored drops plunk down onto wet sand,_ his blood, _and it is with the last remaining consciousness that Remus drags himself up out of the surf’s reach, and collapses._

“Oh,” is all Sirius says. For a split second, his hold on Remus’ waist loosens.

 _Because you’ve told him,_ Remus’ mind says, _you told him what happened and how many foul dirty men have touched you._

Then Sirius inspects his shoulder, the stabbed one. That’s why he’d let go.

“I’m sorry,” he says and kisses the scar. “Sorry for everything.”

“Don’t apologize.”

“For going after Peter like that. For leaving Harry. For leaving you. Things could’ve been so much better. We could’ve been together, and had Harry with us, and—”

“You know that wouldn’t have ever happened.”

“I know, but it’s far nicer than what did. It was something I did in Azkaban.”

“What?”

“Rewrote our history. Kept me sane.”

“Even after I…” Remus trails off, thinking of the trial.

“Yeah, even after that. I knew I was innocent, and that you were just grieving. War does funny things to our minds. I can’t blame you.”

“Would you have done the same thing? If it had been me?” Remus asks. Sirius, for a moment, regards him carefully, and then answers,

“Yes.”


	5. Chapter 5

Two days after Christmas, Sirius and Mrs. Weasley got into a horrible fight.

Hermione heard the shouting from upstairs. She was out of the shower, about to go tell Ginny the bathroom was free, when a great roar wound its way up to the third floor hallway, so furiously, and for a second, she worried something truly awful had happened. 

“Hermione, you hear that?” Ginny met her at the banister, then the twins and Ron and Harry, and they all ran downstairs in search of the noise.   
“—best for him, but you’ve an irresponsible way of showing it!”

“Lay off, woman, right _now!_ He’s my godson, don’t you forget, and if you think you can just pick him up at King’s Cross one day and suddenly he’s your twentieth child, then—”

Mrs. Weasley and Sirius stood at opposite ends of the kitchen table, out of their chairs and screaming at one another. The rest of the Order sat trapped between the fight. A few looked down and away or had backed into corners. Moody’s eye shook, and it spun around wildly every once and while; Bill’s attention darted between his mother and Sirius frantically like he couldn’t figure out who was more important to watch; Remus was paler than ever and sweating slightly with nerves; only Tonks seems happily unperturbed, watching the fight unfold while shoving now-cold soup into her mouth. 

“He was alone. A boy! Alone!”

“ _My_ boy, Molly. Mine!”

“ _James’_ boy. There’s a reason you never had a child.”

“I knew James since the first year, Molly. You can’t just come in here and assume that you’ve got a better handle on who he was or what Harry needs, because—”

“We _all_ knew him, Sirius! Not everything’s a competition at this age. We’re all adults, and it’s war, and now is not the time to be picking out who knew—”

With every minute they grew louder, and Remus wondered how they hadn’t noticed the shivering frightened tableaux in the doorway. Except for Harry, he saw. Harry’s face shone.

“You—” Sirius pounded the table. “Do. Not. Know. What’s. Best. For. Him! You are not his mother. That was Lily! It’s not your job to tell me what he needs or what he wants or whatever you think is the goddamn truth. It’s not your job to fucking raise him like your own son!” 

“Someone had to! Perhaps you could’ve done so if you hadn’t been in prison.” 

It went dead silent. 

Tonks dropped her spoon, and it fell into the soup. Remus jerked. Sirius looked murderous, deadly calm, hands on the table, barred like a dog, and quiet. Molly, chest heaving and red hair a flaming mess, watched him with equal venom. 

Then Sirius sighed, took a cigarette from the half empty pack on the table, and lit it with one of the burning candles on the table. He sat back down slowly, the chair’s creak reverberating around the room. Unblinking, smoke whistling out his nose, his gaze remained on Molly.

No one except Remus noticed the six children in the doorway, all watching open-mouthed and wide-eyed. He met Harry’s gaze for a moment; Harry, who watched Sirius with something of a glow. 

_Pride_ , Remus noted. _That’s pride there, in his eyes._

“Being a parent requires being clear-headed, not abandoning your godson while storming off in a murderous rage,” Mrs. Weasley pressed on quietly. “Peter could’ve waited that night, Sirius.”

Sirius still said nothing. 

“I am sure you are quite a capable godfather. Except when Harry needed you most, he wasn’t what you put first, and so it’s quite hard for me to take parenting lessons from you when that’s all I’ve to go on.”

One of Sirius’ hands had disappeared below the table. Remus felt it scrabble at his trouser leg, clutching on, white-knuckled. 

“Sometimes, I really do wonder why James picked you, because—”

“ _Molly,_ ” Remus cut in sharply. He’d been so quiet the entire time that Mrs. Weasley shut up immediately. Now, everyone at the time watched him, the Quiet Marauder, soft-spoken and usually placid. “That’s enough, I think.”

Sirius’ hand relaxed on his trouser leg, but remained, palm flat on his thigh.

“From the _both_ of you,” he continued. Sirius’ face was briefly obscured by a cloud of smoke. 

Ah, the vices they all hid behind.

“Whatever disagreements you may have, it would do well to always remember that you both serve as _examples._ ”

Only then did Sirius and Mrs. Weasley see the children huddled in the kitchen doorway. Their faces fell but, Remus noted again, Harry refused to match Sirius’ muddled expression of disappointment. 

“Oh,” Mrs. Weasley said vacantly. “I am sorry you had to see that.” For once, she didn’t scold them for eavesdropping, as she had many times in the past. 

“Yes, completely inappropriate on my part,” Sirius added, eyes downcast. 

Harry looked like he wanted to protest this concession, until Tonks stood up and said, 

“C’mon! Nearly past all of your bedtimes, but it’s Christmas so I’m sure you can all stay up later. There’s some de-stung Billywigs up in the library, and I’ve been wanting to try out some charms on them. Let’s go!”

Her cheer hid the order well, but they all knew there was no option to decline. She pushed through their little net, and they followed dimly, still shocked. Harry was the last to leave, lingering, and he tried to catch Sirius’ eyes one more time. But Sirius was focused on a spot in the table’s grain and wouldn’t look up. 

Quiet again, without the children, and everyone unsure of how to proceed. Until,

“Molly, I’m sorry.” Sirius looked at her and wouldn’t break her gaze. Grey had softened and now he just appeared sad. She nodded, more to herself than him, and said,

“Me, too, Sirius. I shouldn’t have said what I did. We’re both parents and here, with all of you, it’s one big family and it wouldn’t do well to fight with how things are these days.” 

Hands fisted on her hips, she continued to nod, surveying the table: a mother trying to put her house back in order.

“It’s getting a bit late. Nymphadora is right. Why don’t we all head off?” 

Jovial. A bit strained.

“Mum, I think that’s a splendid idea,” Bill rose and took Fleur by the arm, towards the Floo. “Thank you, Sirius, for the meal. Smashing…” He raised a hand, mumbling a bit to himself, and Sirius returned the gesture. 

The rest of the Order filed out with timid goodbyes. They had seen just a spark of the master’s rage, and now they fled his house like the wind. 

Then only Remus was left. 

He rested his elbows on the table, hands fisted by his cheek. Sirius avoided his eyes. Like a child who’d done wrong and squirmed to admit it. When he ducked his head lower and his hair fell out from behind his ears, he let it hang like a curtain. 

Remus sighed. Warm and rounded, with no anger or impatience, just _existence,_ and the quiet tolerance made Sirius’ heart break. 

He scrubbed at his face in shame and kept the loose between his lips. _inhale exhale._ No expectation to speak. Then, at last, he looked at Remus. 

A minute passed. Remus studied each slant and line and wrinkle, the cut of a winter beard, big scared sad eyes. At his first twitch to advance, Sirius flinched, and Remus, far off inside himself, where no one else could see, wilted. 

With a slow shaking hand, Remus took the cigarette from Sirius’ mouth, leaned across the table, and kissed him gently. Sirius shook under his lips. Remus stood and offered a hand. 

“Bed. Let’s go.”

A hand took his, and they left the kitchen. 

“I’m sorry,” Sirius whispered at the base of the steps. Remus turned. 

“We’ll talk in the morning.” 

“I said I’m _sorry._ ” 

“Yes,” Remus nodded, three steps up and staring down at Sirius, who appeared on the verge of tears. “You’re tired, Sirius. It’s been a terribly long day for all of us. Let’s go to bed and in the morning, you’ll feel better.” 

“But I won’t.” 

Petulant, a child, and Remus searched for gentle hands and heart amidst great darkness. 

“But you will. Trust me. There’s nothing a good sleep didn’t fix.” He felt Sirius’ woes were much greater than a simple fight with Molly Weasley. “C’mon. Bed.”

 _Together. You pressed to me, and the world will melt away like nothing._

Sirius shook his head now, violently, hands clenched on the sleeves of his robes. 

“No.”

Remus stamped his foot and twitched in frustration. He jerked his head in the direction of the steps and began to climb. A hand dove out and grabbed at his jumper. 

“No. _Stop._ ” Sirius was wild-eyed. “I am so _sick_ of you being like this all the time. So alright with everything. You never get mad, and you’re never mad at me and I am so so deserving of it, and still you just sit there and kiss me when I’m so mean and not even close to being worth your love.” 

In a second, Remus descended the steps, wrenched Sirius’ hands from his sweater, and slammed him against the wall. Sirius gasped. 

“Shut up. _Shut up._ ” Remus pressed further, and Sirius gaped at him. “That’s where you’re fucking wrong, alright? I am mad at you all the time, you’re infuriating. You complain and whine and refuse sensibility—” Remus’ anger, hushed and strong, was so sudden, so unlike him, that Sirius thought he’d been momentarily possessed. “—and I’m downright exhausted hearing about it.”

“I—”

“You’re strong-willed, blinded by it sometimes, and one day that’s gonna get you in terrible _terrible_ trouble. Harry watches you. You’re all he’s got. And that’s where I think Molly’s got a bit of a point.” Remus pushed one slender finger into Sirius’ sternum, bare amid half open shirt, swathed with thick black ink. 

“In your need to avenge things, to do all the beautiful justice this world needs, you forget your greatest obligation. To James, to Lily, to me, to the whole fucking world.”

“Harry?” Sirius choked out, struggling to breathe because Remus now had an entire forearm against his chest. 

“Harry.” _Set the child right; he’s staring into the sun right now._ “The boy’s never had a proper home. Don’t deny him that again.” Remus shook his head until Sirius joined him. 

Then he eased back. Sirius coughed, able to breathe, and remained against the wall. Remus started up the steps. When he realized he was alone, he looked back with something empty and unsympathetic in his eyes. A chilling visage Sirius had only seen once before.

A long time, they stood there, just watching. Until the air cleared and the clock rang in the new day and the midnight corners of the house went static and hazy to their eyes. Until Remus turned and continued up the steps without a word. Quiet and passive and too shocked with himself to realize it might’ve done Sirius good to know the same. 

Two days later, Remus caught Harry and Sirius on the stairs. 

He remained unnoticed in the dark velvet of the aching house, watching and listening. They sat on the bottom step, heads close together, hushed. 

“—wrong of me to do what I did.”

Harry shook his head. “No, no, I don’t think so.” 

Remus strained to hear. 

“But it was. It sets a poor example. Mrs. Weasley and I are no different, absolutely, and I never want you to think the house that holds you isn’t stable.”

“I didn’t think that,” Harry said, “I don’t agree.”

“You don’t?” Sirius, surprised and mildly disconcerted. “About what?”

“I like you better than her, you know. So when she said you went after Peter instead of staying with me, or that you’d’ve been a poor father,” Harry said. “I disagree.”

“You never knew your mum or dad.” Sirius watched Harry’s face, full of proud stoic youth. He wasn’t listening, Remus knew. “You didn’t know them. Molly’s right. I can be an alright godfather, but I’m not your dad, Harry. I hope you understand that?” He kept checking in with questions. They were not receiving answers. 

“Oh, I know.” Remus didn’t think Harry did. “But she doubts you. Which is plenty stupid, because I don’t doubt you one bit.” 

Sirius resisted so hard, Remus saw. He stared at Harry, searching in vain for a way into the boy’s head, to set him straight. But how could he do that when he barely believed it himself? How much of what he said now was just Remus’ own hand, even if he didn’t know Remus was watching? Or was it just fear of what had transpired earlier? Fear of the wolf?

“I liked it when you yelled at her,” Harry said. “Put her in her place. She’s mad overbearing and awful.”

“No…” Hesitant. 

“Yes. Ron thinks so, too. She doesn’t understand. What it’s like, and what it’s like with you.” Harry looked a little lovesick, as lovesick as godson could be.

Remus shrunk farther into the shadows. 

Sirius stared at his polished shoes for a minute. His wrists rested on his knees, and he bounced his hands around, bracelets and rings twinkling in the light. Remus understood he was thinking, weighing things in his mind, soothed by dancing metal. Then,

“She’s a right bitch.” Sirius raised his head and grinned at Harry. He paused, winced to himself, and said, “Just don’t tell anyone.”

He winked. 

Harry beamed back. “I won’t. Won’t ever.” And they laughed conspiratorially. Then, oddly, Sirius took Harry’s hand in his own large long one and they kept laughing. 

Remus couldn’t watch any long. He slunk off, leaned against the wall, closed his eyes. His heart was low, disappointed and knotted with undue jealousy. Outside, war raged, and he had no doubts about its eventual victors. The conflict of the heart, however, was a much more thorny matter.

September 1977:

“I wanna marry you,” Sirius says. 

“Nah…” Remus says. His eyes are closed, and he’s nearly gone. They’re on a sunken cot in the middle of the Shack. Sirius watches the dust motes flit around and then turns back on his side to see Remus: naked and sleepy and looking, for the first time in his life, not so fucking sad. 

“C’mon…” Sirius whines and holds a hand out to trace down the bridge of Remus’ nose. Except Remus’ nose twitches and he grabs Sirius’ wrist before Sirius can touch him.

“No, your mum’ll kill you.” 

“Exactly why I wanna do it.” 

Sirius is just as naked, and Remus cracks an eye open to watch him: half-tangled in a bedsheet, planes and slants of faultless skin, dark curls twining and falling over his eyes, red wet lips parted in a sated pout. The midday sunlight turns Remus something slightly better than his usual pallor, but Sirius is untouchable.

“Do you know,” Remus asks sleepily, “who David Caravaggio is?”

Sirius shakes his head.

“A Renaissance painter, a Muggle Italian.”

“I gathered,” Sirius says with a boyish grin, until he catches Remus’ eyes and sees utter adoration there. Remus unfurls a long arm and holds Sirius’ chin with his thumb and forefinger. 

“He would’ve liked you, should’ve painted you, looking like this.”

“ _This?_ ” Sirius, propped on his elbows, tilts his head down between his stomach and the mattress, where his cock is trapped and then up to Remus, on his back and languid. Bruises already bloom around his pelvis where Sirius had bit him. 

Remus pulls Sirius to his chest and reaches lower, past his navel, below the trail of hair, lower still, and—

“ _Oh…_ ” 

Sirius whimpers and bites his lip. Within seconds, he’s hauled atop Remus. Already, they are casting off the past half hour and ready to go all over again. 

Remus grabs his cock, and Sirius twists his hips like it’s torture and not unabashed wild love. Suddenly, he giggles and braces his palms against Remus’ chest, smiling wide.

“My husband.” 

Remus rolls and pins Sirius below him. “My love. My prince, letting some half-blood _werewolf_ fuck a sweet elegant Black.” He pauses and starts trailing kisses down Sirius’ body. “Mr. Black.”

It’s the first time Sirius hears Remus toss out his condition so haphazardly. Uncaring, unashamed, nearly...warm. He wants to revel in that notion, hold the moment in his hands forever like June rain, but then Remus is kissing _low_ and every thought he’s ever had ceases to be.


	6. Chapter 6

“I want to be just like you when I grow up," Harry said.

“No, you don’t.” 

“Sure, I do.” 

Sirius shook his head. He stood in front of the full-length mirror in his bedroom and changed for the evening Order meeting.

Pressed wool trousers, dark dress shirts, ironed and crisp. Some nights he wore a waistcoat and jacket, brushed clean and taken out from some depth of his closet, reserved for importance. Or bold colored suits that, coupled with Sirius’ shoulder length hair, gave him the smarting resemblance of Mick Jagger. 

“You do not—” Sirius faced away from the mirror and craned to see if the bottom back hem of the burgundy jacket was crease-free. “—want to be like me, Harry dear.” 

Harry wondered why he took such care in getting ready; the ritual began at three precisely: a long soak followed ironing whatever outfit he refused to let near Kreacher’s grimy hands. Then he’d meticulously brush his hair until it shone, smoking nervously in front of the bathroom mirror. He’d dress, pour himself a drink, and finally, he’d stand in the long mirror and inspect himself from every angle. 

The only thing that made Harry _that_ nervous about his own appearance was Cho. 

“Why would you want that for yourself?” Sirius asked, giving his front one final sweep and then patting his arms at his sides. “Nothing but death, prison, and house arrest,” he added wryly. “It’s a drag, lad. Feeling useless most of the time. Nah, you never wanna be me.” He crossed to the little table by the window, where gin and tumblers waited, and kissed Harry’s forehead in passing. 

“But you’re not useless, and you’re exactly what everyone should be,” Harry insisted, as Sirius poured himself a generous drink. “The rest of them are terrible.” 

“You only say that because they’ve said no to you,” Sirius countered, thinking of all the times the Order had declined Harry’s passionate plea to help. “‘No’ is not always a bad thing.” That was Remus speaking. Remus, who’s resigned compassion pained Sirius enough to do the right thing. 

“And what about Remus?” Sirius asked. “Is _he_ terrible?”

“No, never!” Harry exclaimed. “Professor Lupin could never be terrible. I just mean the rest of the adults, I suppose.”

Sirius bet that if he listed each older member individually, Harry would falter to find them ‘terrible’, but for now, he sat on the bed and refused protest.

“Here.” He held out the glass of gin. “You want some?”

“Can I ?”

“Sure.” Sirius shrugged. “Better here than out. Just don’t drink too much all at once. Small sips!” he interjected when Harry raised the glass too quickly. “There you go.”

Harry drank and his face contorted. “Ugh, it’s like petrol.”

“You’ll get used to it.” Sirius took the glass back. “Told your father something of the sort the first time I tried whiskey” Then, playful, with a beaming smile, “Just don’t tell Remus. He’d have my head!”

Harry grinned in return. “Is he coming back today?”

Sirius waited, thinking, and patted the space on the bed between them to smooth it out. “We can hope so. He never says where he goes. He just leaves, and each time I’ve gotta pray he’ll come back.”

“He doesn’t tell you? I never know where he goes, but I assumed that was just because I’m in the Order. Not _old_ enough.”

Sirius frowned at him, then said factually, “No, he doesn’t. It’s safer if we don’t know where he is.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” 

“Most of being an adult doesn’t. Alright,” Sirius stood and knocked back the rest of the glass in one go. “They should be getting in soon. Let’s go. You can help with the fire.”

Every Order meeting, they ran a fire in the drawing room. To cast off the night and the great burden of war, and instead eat and drink and dance to happier days.  
Harry made for the door only to find Sirius wasn’t following him. He’d drifted back to the bathroom to retrieve his cigarettes and had gotten stuck in front of the mirror, like a bird to silver, and was brushing his hair again. 

And when Harry realized Sirius really was stuck, he left, unsure of what could make his godfather so self-conscious. 

Remus watched them that night. 

After Arthur and Molly left, and Bill, finally broken by his own nerves, got pink from the whisky, and much reason was gone, and all the children (if one could call them that) charmed the record player as loud at it could go and danced and screamed in joyous fearful defiance of the new war. 

It was a dreamy room: hot and red-lit with a roaring hearth, and when the children joined hands and spun in circles, Remus witnessed religion. Bill had pulled Sirius aside earlier and filled his glass again and again, and now Sirius, a child himself, swung Harry around. Harry kept laughing, shouting, until they all collapsed in a heap on the floor. 

“You look tired.” Tonks settled into the large armchair next to him.

“Quite,” Remus answered. “Some time ago the day became the night, dusk became the dawn, and it has been an endless day since.” 

“That was pretty.”

“I’m flattered,” Remus said thinly. _She likes you, you know, Sirius had said months ago._ And Remus had dismissed her interest in him as fascination with the wolf. Except such months had gone, and still her gaze lingered. 

“They’re all very drunk,” she mused, surveying the scene. Then she looked at him. “Fancy a cuppa? I can put some cream in it.” She winked. 

Remus gave her a long look, deciding, and he smiled archly. “Why don’t you, then. Thank you.” 

“There you go,” she said and stood. After a moment of decision, he joined her. Now, on the floor, most of the children had settled, near sleep, except Bill, who stroked Ginny’s hair, and Sirius and Harry, who lay close and whispering. 

Remus had seen it before, on the floor of the Gryffindor common room, years ago. He did not wish to see it now. 

“They’re really terribly pissed,” Tonks said happily, getting two glasses and putting the kettle on. Remus sat down at the table. “Saw Sirius slip Harry his glass a few times.” She laughed. 

“He _what?_ ” Remus was alert now, instead of drifting into the way her blue robes swished around her legs. 

“Oh,” Tonks moaned. “What a stupid thing to say!” Remus looked stoically mad. Pale, polished violence lingering just below his slightly buttoned-up academic manner.

“Better than not having me know about it,” Remus said, although he understood she was not to blame. “If I’d’ve known…”

“Well, now you do,” Tonks said. She poured the tea, added the cream, the whiskey, some sugar, and set it before Remus. She sat opposite him and smiled slightly. “You’re tired.”

“We’ve been over this.”

“No, but truly _tired_. Not something a good night’s sleep would fix. I can see it.”

“Then you’re being presumptuous.” But his words were kind. “I’m quite alright, but I appreciate the concern.” 

“Any time.” She understood to drop the subject. 

Remus drank his tea—warm, with a hot slide in his belly and heat at the ears—and scrubbed at his neck. Where it ached. He was getting too old to outrun Dark Magic. To wrestle it down to nothing. And to keep it all inside; Albus had sworn him to secrecy. 

“You’re in pain.”

“I’m fine.”

“No, it’s ridiculous.” Tonks got up and stood to massage his shoulders. “You’re never here, you hardly eat during meetings. Do you sleep okay? When you’re here?”

“Yeah, why?” Her fingers dug a particularly knotted spot, and Remus grit his teeth. 

“You wander around at night. It’s unnerving.”

“Unnerving!”

“Exactly so. I don’t spend every night here, but if it’s too late, Mad-Eye doesn’t like us traveling alone, you know. And my room’s on your floor, I bunk with Hermione and Ginny.” She rolled her eyes, even if he couldn’t see, but he heard it in her tone. “Ginny never closes the damn door, and the light gets in and sometimes you walk past.” 

She’d watched for him. Waited. Understood his frame and gait and how he moved. 

“Oh.” That was all Remus could say. 

“Is something the matter, then?” she asked, and momentarily broke from massaging his shoulders to reach and put the back of her hand on his forehead. As if he were ill with a fever. “Can’t sleep? I never can after those ghastly meetings. Or bad dreams? My mum always made an excellent little potion with thyme in it that helped.” 

An emotion, unnamed, crept into Remus. 

“No, no nightmares. But thank you,” and he tilted his head back to look up at her. She beamed down at him, and her hair turned bright pink. “I simply walk around some nights.”

“Of course.” 

Deeping probing fingers by the sweep of his neck, and involuntarily, his head tipped down. For a while, Remus drank his tea and let her take his tension. Tonks hummed a song to herself over the crack of the hearth. Sounds from the drawing room had ceased, but the silence was warm and sticky, like love. 

“Oh, you’ve a scar here,” she whispered. Her hands stroked a little line behind his ear.

Remus reached up to touch it, too, like feeling it under his own hands would remind him of how it had been earned. “Eh, that one’s old, not too interesting. Got it when I was at Hogwarts and still learning to turn properly.” 

Sirius liked to kiss the scar most nights.

Emboldened, Tonks slid her finger across the scar on his cheek. They both gasped. Far off, away from this moment now, Remus wondered why people loved to touch his scars so much. His mother, Sirius, Nymphadora, as if he were an artifact of study, and not a person who’d spent his whole life learning to not hate his appearance. 

“You hate them, don’t you?” she said. “Don’t. They’re pretty.” 

“They’re disgusting.”

“No, they’re not,” she said, still tracing the same line, “They’re a mark of a struggle you survived and so—”

That was when Sirius came in. 

He and Harry were slung around each other, but he stopped dead in the doorway and made a strangled echoed sound. His eyes darted between Remus and Tonks, and his mouth remained in a surprised ‘o’. 

“Sirius…” Remus began, quietly. Harry clung to Sirius, flushed. His smile, which had been so wide a moment ago, died. Neither he nor Tonks truly understood what they saw now, but like a change in the weather, whatever was happening was bad. 

Sirius shook his head and shrugged Harry off, who stumbled into the doorframe. As he backed up, Remus rose from his chair. Tonks watched it all, hands held high as if at gunpoint and panicking. Sirius stared her down. She didn’t understand why he looked so upset; she’d only been trying to help.

“Sirius,” Remus repeated. Sirius kept shaking his head, sweating from the drink and the heat of the kitchen and the knotted-up fury in his stomach. Then he turned and ran.

By the time Remus made it to the foot of the steps, Sirius was gone. A clunking patter rose higher and higher, boots on the stairs, and without looking back to Tonks and Harry (who’d slumped into a chair and was clumsily batting at Tonks as she patted his face and neck down with a damp towel), Remus followed. 

The bedroom door slammed in his face the second he reached it. 

From inside, he heard a loud crash and shatter, then a scream, then silence. Remus let the moment ebb and flow, like shaking water, until it stilled and became glass again. Then he knocked and said gently,

“Sirius…”

Nothing. The door had been locked too, magically from the inside. Remus sighed, put his face in his hands, and then pressed his ear to the wood. Soft sobbing sounded from inside.

Drunken cries followed many things not worth tears. 

But he could not deny how it had appeared. 

So for a long time, he stood at the door, watching his bronzed twisted reflection in the ‘Sirius’ name plate and waiting. 

The door never opened. Remus stood there for nearly thirty minutes before he knew it wouldn’t. So he went to his room and drew a bath. 

He always turned away from himself when undressing. Tonight, he watched the mirror with masochism. Shoes untied, sweater yanked off, then his trousers, exposing bony legs, and then unbuttoning his shirt in a slow agonizing pace. He opened it and let it drop off his shoulders, a bird unfurling his wings, where he bore his chest to himself despite the shame. 

Scarred and thin, like wet, stretched crepe paper. A fresh wound covered his breastbone, and a sharp new mark ran the length of his stomach, far below his navel. It had scabbed, but now bled again, oozing, and at the beginning and ending seams, where they closed into deltas, the skin was green. Infected with Dark Magic. It would need treatment. 

Remus Apparated downstairs, not wanting to face Tonks and Harry but needing Healing supplies. The kitchen turned up empty, chairs pushed in, glasses washed and put away and all evidence of what had transpired earlier was gone, as if it had never been. 

Merlin, he wished.

He gathered his things quickly—Dittany, Moly, lavender—and returned to the bath, down to his y-fronts and freezing. The bath burned; he’d dumped in the plants haphazardly. Never good ordinarily at potions, he was even more distracted with guilt and worry. 

With a wave of his hand, he lit the little row of half-burned candles that were perched on the counter. Then he sat in the swimming half-darkness of the steamy room: a dimmed sweltering grotto.

Boiling, Remus gripped the sides of the tub and lowered himself below the water. Above, the world swam, broken and dim; below he was cradled, not yet born. 

With effort he pushed himself deeper into the tub. His buoyed body resisted the plateau of water beneath him. He kept pushing until slick porcelain touched spine, and only his feet, narrow and white, stuck above the surface. 

He remained underwater until he felt lightheaded. Until it strained his mouth and chest to keep closed, and he wanted to burst, break the plane, and take heaving gasps of life. He thought of Sirius, sobbing, and remained. He thought of Harry’s drunken face and remained. He thought of the two of them, all of them, all the children, on the floor, crisscrossed and dependent, and him, alone, Tonk’s hands on his neck, and with a yell, Remus came up. 

He gasped for air, panting, slumped over with a view of his knotted knees and bruised legs, his limp prick. The past half hour replayed in his head, a carousel spinning too fast, or like being tossed into the bowl of a twister. He spun and spun and spun, all funneled down to the same thin point, like Apparating, squeezing into a single decimal: Sirius’ little gasp of shock and the cold death that bloomed in Remus’s stomach. 

Then he came back up and spun down again. 

They had all gotten so stupid. 

Finally, regaining breath, Remus stood on twitching legs and sat on the lip of the tub. He’d laid the supplies out on the ledge, and with care, he chose what he needed and began to dress his own wounds. Water dripped down his back and pooled around him. Remus shook with the chill, simultaneously cold and heat drunk. 

First a paste for the gash on his right ribs, below the armpit. Then another salve on his chest and for the purple on his legs. Dried Moly petals for curses, and he scrubbed them down to nothing around the V openings on the stomach cut. 

He waited many minutes, shivering and wondering when Sirius would care, _if_ he would care, to seek his lover out. He listened for any movement in the old house.

Silence. 

When the pastes and dressings had disappeared from his skin, magic sunk in, Remus reentered the tub and washed himself clean. Peppermint soap (Sirius’ shampoo, which had been in here since they’d used Remus’ bathroom to shower together), felt like luxury to him, opulent guilt, and so when he scrubbed his scalp clean, he did it with painful vigor. As punishment. 

The warm towel was a second pleasure. It took him in like Sirius’ arms hadn’t in a long time. Without warning, Remus felt ill and sat on the closed toilet seat for a great while, exhausted in the soul. 

It hurt to sew up his wounds. 

The needle slipped under the skin with pinched clarity. Remus bit his lip to push it through the other side and then tug. Molly could’ve helped; she’d mended many. Tonight, Remus wanted to do it alone. 

He yanked the stitching closed, tied it tight, and broke the thread with his teeth. Then he threw the needle somewhere close by where he couldn’t see it and hoped he’d step on it later accidentally. 

Gauze and pads for the scraps and surface wounds. Both a wizard and werewolf, he’d heal quickly, most likely by morning. 

Winter mornings, clear and sharp, allowed nothing to hide in its folds. The house would rise with optimism: Hermione helping Kreacher with breakfast, on civic principle, and dragging Ginny with her, while Ron and Harry and the twins set the table. Remus would make tea and coffee, an earlier riser than his counterpart, who’d stumble in mid-meal, robe half-unbuttoned, and tousled, languid like a cat. When everyone was quite distracted, Remus sometimes felt a foot bumping his own, a brush on the calf, a ‘good morning’, and for a second, they were never at war. 

The coming day made Remus groan aloud with dread. Tonight had turned out to be a waking nightmare: all transpired in that nestled place of hallucination, contrived, perhaps only a dream. Tomorrow he’d have to face its reality, whether he wanted to or not.

Remus dried his hair with the towel, slipped on the pajama bottoms he’d left folded on the little table by the door, and brushed his teeth. With another pass of his hand, the candles extinguished, and he went into the bedroom. 

Sirius was waiting for him.

He sat on the bed, one leg crossed over the other. A cigarette was lit in one hand. Suit jacket gone, satin evergreen shirt unbuttoned with a large sagging collar. His hair was messy, mussed and tangled in a way that made Remus think of _sex_ despite Sirius’ wet eyes and red face, left over from crying and still slightly drunk. 

Surprised, Remus stopped in the doorway. They stared at each other for a long time. For his neat posture, Sirius was simultaneously slack, weepy in the limbs and heart, the refined hysteria of the feminine. Instability lingered in his eyes. 

“You pig,” he drawled at long last. 

Remus winced. Sensing a tempest, he flicked a finger at the door and wordlessly drew a Silencing charm around the room. 

_Let it run its course. As it always does. Many nights no different than this one._

“Letting her touch you like that. You’re rotten.” Sirius took a drag, desperately, like the cigarette was oxygen and sobriety in the same breath. “Figures. I’m too boring.” 

Remus went and sat in the big chair across from the bed, directly in front of the mess presented to him now. He’d dragged the chair here one night to have a good view of the bed. Then he’d asked that Sirius undress, lie down, and touch himself until he came. 

“You’re never home,” Sirius continued, “And when you are, you’re with some broad, who’s longing to have you. See!” he shouted and pointed at Remus with his cigarette. Ash fell onto his pants; he brushed it off without looking. “I was right, wasn’t _I_?” The ‘I’ curled up in a keening whine, and big wet tears came to his eyes. 

Remus tapped the chair’s armrests.

“She likes you. And what am I to do about it! Stuck in this damn house!” he screamed at the walls around them. “Wasting and trapped. You _both_ get to leave. And I don’t know what you do when you’re out.” He broke and put his head in his hands, crying. 

Intrigued, Remus set one elbow up on the chair and rested his chin on his fist. Like a patron at a zoo watching some chimp or bird or bear squawk and flap, while thinking so highly of the refined human self. 

Finally, the crying grew grating, and Remus said calmly,

“When I’m out, I’m fighting. Going after Dark Magic. Albus asks me to do it.” Sirius raised his head to listen. “I’m defending our land, this house, _you._ ”

“How noble,” Sirius spat. 

Remus rubbed his stubbled jaw, a few days unshaved. He’d been deep in the wild this time, way down outside Caracas, in El Ávila. 

“You’re not an Auror,” Sirius continued, smoking wildly now, “‘Going after Dark Magic’.” It was mocking. 

“No, I am not, but I’ve a few advantages some of the other Aurors don’t. Dark Magic is different when you’re part of it.” 

“Ah, yes, remind us all of your _ailment_. About how you’re so deserving and—”

“He was drunk, Sirius,” Remus cut in loudly. “You got him drunk.” 

Sirius faltered. For a split second, he looked worried: pinned down, too clumsy to slip out of admitting his mistake. 

“I asked one thing of you.” Remus held up a finger. He leaned forward onto his knees. “One thing. You tell me every damn day how useless you are. And I told you you weren’t, and your biggest job was to protect Harry. And then you didn’t.”

“Well, I—”

Remus stood suddenly, and Sirius’ eyes widened. 

“Getting him drunk, inebriated, defenses down, isn’t helpful. It’s downright stupid. Do you know how open he is to Voldemort then?” Remus gestured, fingers spread wide by his head, like wings. “Fair game.” 

He inched forward. 

“Weak.”

Even closer now.

“Prey.” Both hands were braced on either side of Sirius’ slim frame, and he leaned close. Sirius stared up into Remus’ face, dark and angry, and whimpered. 

“Dead meat!” Remus shouted, beat the mattress with his fists, and Sirius screamed. 

“Dead meat, you hear me!” Remus yelled again. He shook Sirius’ shirt in one strong fist, and Sirius wailed. “You don’t wanna be useless, huh? I gave you one fucking thing to do, and you failed. You’re a failure, you understand? Exactly what you didn’t want to be, a useless rat, just like Peter! I’m out everyday,” Remus pointed blindly at the door, “putting my neck on the line for you and Harry, for our family, and what do you do? You go and put him at risk. Like none of this fucking matters! When you do that, that’s what that tells me. That you don’t care. That it’s unimportant. That what _I_ do is unimportant.” 

He kept screaming, and Sirius, loose in his grip like a rag doll, sobbed. 

“That _this_ , everything we’ve got, just us, isn’t worth shit. That’s what you’re telling me, Sirius.” Remus, exhausted, let up. He released his grip, and Sirius slumped forward, shaking with sobs. Sloppily, he smacked Sirius’s cheek. “Pathetic. Pick up your fucking dignity.” 

“You love her,” Sirius slurred, loud and uncontrollable. He fought now with whatever he had. Desperate. 

“Jesus Christ,” Remus breathed. 

“You _love_ ,” a whinging yowl, “ _her_.” 

Remus rushed Sirius with a roar. Half-prepared, Sirius stood and threw his hands out. They collided, and Remus beat Sirius with open palms. Sirius fought back. 

“I don’t fucking love her, you cunt! No!”

“Yes!” 

“Only because you were too drunk to notice me there.”

“All about you!”

“Getting your godson drunk.”

“She was touching you.”

“He’s not James, Sirius!” 

The world stopped. Crooked, and halted on its axis, ringing in the night. 

Remus, hands knotted into the slippery material Sirius wore, froze, mouth open and still panting from the admonishment. 

Sirius stopped crying, shocked. 

He remained still for as long as Remus did, and when the two large hands holding him loosed, he stepped back and sank onto the bed again. Quietly, he brushed away his final tears, full on his lashes. His cigarette had fallen to the floor in their tussle and strangely extinguished itself to a neat, half-smoked barrel. Sirius picked it up and relit it, shaking. 

Remus waited in the middle of the room, fists clenched and stationary at his sides. The strain on his stitches was now noticeable. 

Eventually, Sirius sighed dramatically and oddly dreamy, and said,

“No, I suppose you’re right.” 

Remus, outwardly composed on a dime, was mildly furious. Quietly furious, gently unhappy. “It doesn’t do him well, is all.”

Sirius regarded him steadily until he jerked his head towards the bed. Remus sat gingerly. Tired. So, so tired. 

Sirius offered the cigarette. Remus smoked it like his own lover’s mouth. 

“Alright,” Sirius said at last. “My room’s next door.”

Remus, ashamed at the forgiveness, said nothing. 

“S’got a bigger bed,” Sirius reached out and rubbed his bare arm. “And me.”

A crooked laugh, a half-moon grin as an answer. 

“Well, you’re not sleeping here,” and, as if for the first time noticing the wounds, Sirius lightly touched the stitching on Remus’ chest. “Merlin,” he whispered, “You’re not staying here alone. Did you stitch this up _yourself?_ ”

“Yeah,” Remus’ voice hitched with pain. He took another drag to ease it off. “Got some stuff from the kitchen, sat in the bath for a while.”

“Oh, that must’ve hurt terrible.” Sirius’ compassion was sweet and wet at the edges. “Course it’s poorly done, but not bad for doing it on oneself. You'd be a good Healer, in a pinch.”

“Ta.”

“Hurt much?”

“Not too bad.” 

“We can stitch it up again tomorrow, yeah?”

“No!” Remus said, irritated. How quickly Sirius shoved off his wrongs and bubbled back into being normal and charming, even without sobriety. “It's already all sewn up. It’s just going to have to stay like that.” 

Sirius clucked and fretted a bit, checking the rest of Remus’ body for any other serious wounds. When satisfied, he bent and kissed Remus’ bare chest right where his heart was. Then he stood to leave. 

“You coming, darling?”

 _Darling. Able to call me that just minutes later._

“Yeah, yeah,” Remus waved him off, hands on his hips and staring at his own bare bed. Often empty: he either wasn’t here or spent nights in Sirius’ room. They were melding in funny ways. Either apart, or one complete being when together. Sometimes, at odd times, poor times, Remus wished none of this had ever happened. That they’d never taken up together or fallen in love. 

When nestled deep, Sirius smiling up at him, hot and willing, and Remus just didn’t want it. _Any of it._ During summer that year, when they inhabited Grimmauld alone. When mornings meant tea and peaches and strawberries and cream linen, amber tinted kitchen, bursting with dawn’s light. Sirius would press him to the counter and kiss him. And Remus wanted, in some tiny place, for all of it to go away, to _end_. Sirius, so happy to be finally free and not understanding his new prison, used to dance to records and pull Remus into his arms while he did so, and Remus, smiling and laughing, hated him.

Sometimes wanted him dead. 

“Remus!” A whine. 

“Huh?”

“Let’s go, c’mon.”

“Okay.” 

And they went. Down the dark hall, too far apart to hold hands, and when Remus passed Hermione’s room, he saw the door was barely open and wondered what he looked like now, out and wandering. 

Just past three in the morning, when Remus was fast asleep, Sirius rose, pulled on his robe, took his cigarettes and an old ornate ashtray, and left the room. On the landing halfway up between the second and third floor was a narrow tall window, sill low to the ground. Sirius sat on the carpet, set his stuff down, and propped the window open. 

Outside, it was snowed over London, rows of grey buildings and smokey sky. The snow looked like ash over the city, a new Pompeii. Light twinkled, from houses and streets and cars, and in that moment, Sirius wanted nothing more than to get out his motorbike and drive off into nothing. 

This was his world, his view into everything, a little open strip of window. Living was like breathing through a straw, forever on the edge of passing out. Everyone was so close, and yet they passed by his prison like a fish tank, where he floated inside and spun the same rounds each day, wanting to forget. 

Christ, it was making him disturbed. 

He’d lain awake a long time after Remus had fallen asleep. He couldn’t stop thinking about: hands fisted in his shirt, shaking him, being screamed at. 

_He’s not James._

Embarrassment didn’t cut it. There was something else, another feeling lingering in there, one that—

“You’re still up.”

Remus stood at the bottom of the second-floor landing. Sirius grinned down at him and lit another cigarette. 

“C’mon on up, then,” he whispered. Too pleasant for his own good. 

Remus sat with a groan. 

“You’re getting old,” Sirius smiled, “Making sounds like that.”

“But I’m not old in your bed, and that’s all that matters.”

Sirius laughed. It tapered off quickly. 

“Could you not sleep?” Remus asked. 

Sirius shook his head. “No. But that’s normal. Ever since Azkaban. Haven’t gotten a wink since that shithole.” 

“You’re joking, right?”

“Sure.” Then, “Was it something I said?”

“What do you mean?” _Yes, of course. How dumb do I look?_ “You mean earlier?”

“Yeah.” 

The silence was answer enough. Remus sighed and curled in on himself,

“I’m sorry.” 

“It’s alright. No, you’re right. It was an incredibly inappropriate thing to do, Legilimency aside. We’re examples, like you said.” 

“I still feel quite bad. Yelling like that…” 

Sirius shrugged and kept smoking. “We’ve all got tempers lately. Stressful times. It can’t really be helped.” 

“That’s where we disagree, I think.” 

“Yeah, well, we always have.”

“What?”

“Disagreed. On many things. But difference of opinion keeps it interesting. If we were the same, God, it'd be piss-all boring.”

 _But how different are we really?_ Remus picked at a bit of lint on his pajama bottoms. _When you really think about it?_

“Why do you drink so much?”

Sirius snapped up at the question. Grey darted fast behind a few stray black curls. Then composure slid over his gaze. 

“No more than usual.”

Remus bowed his head and smirked, all-knowing, wordlessly disagreeing. 

“If anything, I drank more in _school_. God, me and James, we’d knock back a bottle night, together.” 

“You got Harry drunk,” Remus said softly.

“Are we back on this again?” Sirius snapped, and lit a third cigarette, nervous. 

“I think you sometimes just forget who he is.”

“He’s not James. Yes, I _know_. You reminded me.”

“You’re his godfather. Not his friend, not his brother. He’s got no mum or dad, and as far as things go, you’re doing double time for both of them.”

“He’s got Molly.” 

“Who he no longer trusts, after you lambasted her.” 

“Because she was being a bitch. Like always.”

“She _cares_ about him. Jesus Christ, how many times do I have to tell you that?” Remus hissed. “That’s my other thing with you, too. You’re covetous about him, and it’s unfair to everyone else.”

“Your other _thing with me?_ ” Sirius growled back. “You got a laundry list you’d like to share? I’m his godfather, for fucks sake. Other people don’t know what’s best for him.”

“I don’t think you do, either.” 

“We never _saved_ James. Do you not think I regret that? I thought about it every day in Azkaban, clung to it. I wake up every day and think about it. It _haunts_ me. It shames me.” 

“Then save him!” Remus shouted suddenly. He stood. Again, here they were, here they’d arrived, here they’d remained. Remus bolted and thundered down the steps. Then he stopped halfway, and turned back, pointing fiercely. “Save what you couldn’t all those years ago. Save your memories and your conscience. Raise the dead and rejoice to forgive yourself!”

“Fuck you!” Sirius screamed. “ _Fuck you!_ I hope the next moon is your last. I hope you go off into the night and die! Then I’ll finally have some peace in my life.” 

But Remus was already gone, and Sirius was alone, with only the freezing wind and the night to keep him company.


	7. Chapter 7

June 1996:

Sirius was upstairs when he heard the clatter. 

He’d woken early, knocked back breakfast, and set to cleaning. No different than last summer; Harry was coming to stay in a few weeks, and the old house had gotten bogged down in the grim of winter. Sirius wanted it to be a bright place when his godson arrived. 

Now, he was picking up things from all the bedrooms and replacing them where they belonged. He even considered painting the walls a different color. Deep green wallpaper traded for nicer colors: powder blue, eggshell, rosewater pink. The winter and subsequent spring, bleaker than any of them had remembered in a long time, taxed him, and let the house slip into neglected disarray. 

He was determined to fix that. 

Harry’s room, the one he’d shared with Ron, was today’s task. Old Bertie Bott’s boxes shoved under the bed, stray chess pieces, shirts and underwear too rank to touch, so he levitated them with his wand and zinged it all down to the waiting wicker laundry basket in the hall. The place had smelled stale earlier; now, windows open, it smelled like summer. 

That was when he heard noises downstairs. A _thunk, stomp_ and _creak_. Someone on the steps, hesitant. 

“Hello?” Sirius left the room to peer over the banister. “Anyone there?”

Remus’ head popped out on the ground floor. He smiled up at Sirius in the little welled space between landings. 

“It’s me. Came in through the Floo. Sorry, should’ve warned you.”

“It’s alright,” Sirius said, wiping his hands of supposed dirt. He descended until he stood a few steps above Remus. 

Remus, who looked good. Tan again, with newer robes than Sirius had ever seen on him. Cotton for summer. If Sirius was being optimistic, he’d venture that Remus had gained a little muscle under his clothes. Good for him. 

Then, neutrally, “What are you doing here?”

“Molly sent me.” Remus retreated back to the kitchen, and Sirius followed. “You get Owl Post today?”

“Don’t normally. Some days, I guess if it’s important. But Dumbledore doesn’t want me being too trackable.” Sirius leaned against the door frame. Remus was busy getting himself a glass of water. So presumptuously, as if he lived here. 

“You want some water?” Sirius asked. Remus smiled sheepishly. 

“Sorry,” he said, and sat. “Anyway, here’s your mail,” and out of his robes he produced a tiny twine-wrapped bundle of letters. “Molly gave me a couple of them today when I saw her.”

“You went to the Burrow?” Sirius snatched up the mail a bit snappier than usual, returning to his nonchalance on the doorframe. Undoing the twine, he flipped through the little stack: Dumbledore, a tiny one from Harry, one from Snape, even. Then Molly, too.

“Only for a bit. Making the rounds today.”

“When did I get so popular?” Sirius said and laughed dryly. 

“You always were.” 

“Why you making rounds?”

“School lets out soon, as I’m sure you’re well aware of.” 

“Of course.”

“Dumbledore just wants me to check in on everyone. Making sure they’re all okay, making sure the houses are safe.”

“Safe?” Sirius frowned. He set the mail down on the counter. 

“For hexes and things. Dark magic. All the children are coming home soon.”

“So Dumbledore’s worried this place is hexed or shit because Harry’s coming back? C’mon, this place is a fortress.”

“So was the Bastille.” 

“You’re so very cultured,” Sirius said tersely. “He’ll be fine.”

“Just a simple precaution,” Remus responded. 

“What is?” 

“I’ve gotta check the house for any curses, charms, stuff like that.” Remus shrugged. 

“Today?”

“No, I’m bringing Bill with me, as backup. So we’ll be back within the week.”

“And what if this place is cursed?” Sirius cut in. “What if I’m alone with all the Dark Magic?”

“You’ll be fine,” Remus said dismissively. “Just don’t go poking around, that’s all.”

“I’m cleaning up the fucking place! For Harry. You expect me to live in filth?”

“No, just don’t go poking around.”

“That’s what you just said.”

“Surfaces are fine. Low hanging fruit. As long as you don’t go through cabinets or open too many urns and chests, you shouldn’t have a problem.” 

A long pause, each frozen in their positions, staring off into places that didn’t contain each other. What, really, was there to talk about? The people they’d become in time apart? The weather? Harry? 

“So Molly sent you?” Sirius asked. Remus looked up at him, blank.

“Yes.” Then he smiled and laced his hands neatly over his stomach. Another yawning silence. Birds sang through the open window, and in the mid-morning heat, glistening and hot now, cars zipped by.

Would it ever end? This pause? Was it waiting? Incubation? Or a slow death? 

“How are you?” Sirius finally asked. Remus tilted his head, as if considering. Perhaps then, a thoughtful answer, conversation waiting in the wings? 

“Fine.” 

“Really? That’s good.”

“Yeah, it’s been quite alright, actually. Less work, it seems, other than going ‘round like some glorified magical electrician.” Remus laughed like he wanted the joke to be funnier than it was. “And you?”

“Oh, you know,” Sirius got meticulously into rolling up his shirt sleeves. “Cleaning and all that.”

“Lovely.” This was uttered without an ounce of sarcasm, and Sirius was suddenly enraged at how politely disengaged Remus could be. “Are you excited for the summer?”

“As excited as you can be during a war. I keep forgetting that sometimes, with all the good weather.”

“Yes, it’s quite deceiving.”

“There’s an Order meeting Wednesday night,” Sirius said carefully. “Are you coming?”

“I’ll see if I can.”

“It'd be great if you could.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” 

“Great,” Sirius said, smiling a bit too brightly. Remus caught the expression and his own soured. Grew _disappointed_. 

“Sirius…” 

“No, I just meant that I was asking if you’d show up.”

“Yeah.” Disbelieving, but still patient. Remus stood, drained his glass, and set it nicely in the sink. He returned toward the hearth, and Sirius felt like a rope was flying out of his grasp, even as he tried to catch it. 

“Look—” Sirius said, “—I’m cleaning right now, but I wanted to maybe pull down some of the wallpaper after lunch. A helping hand wouldn’t hurt. I know it’s not incredibly interesting, but—”

“We both know I couldn’t really do that.” Remus, fully in the fireplace now, smiled sadly. “But thank you, Sirius.”

“Anytime.”

“Good-bye, Sirius.”

“See you on Wednesday, then.” _So fucking desperate_.

And, mid-wave, cheap and half-hearted, Remus let the green flames swallow him up and was gone. And Sirius, who’d had a _‘love you’_ half-born on his tongue, shut his mouth, because they’d both agreed not to say that to each other anymore. 

***

_“There’s nothing you can do, Harry —”_

_“Get him, save him, he’s only just gone through!”_

_“It’s too late, Harry —”_

_“We can still reach him —” Harry struggled hard and viciously, but Lupin would not let go. . . ._

_“There’s nothing you can do, Harry . . . nothing. . . . He’s gone.”_

Grief was a fog. 

Sticky and cool and empty. He slipped in and out of it, lowered in the narrow rowboat of the bed as it slid down the river through the night, under the eaves and willow trees. Above shone glorious distant constellations. To the lower left of Orion’s Belt, brightest star in the sky, twinkling high. 

Too far to kiss or take into his heart. 

He slept in Sirius’ bed, aching for whatever he could find. The pillow smelled of smoke and peppermint, and he breathed it in until it got faint, and he knew, like dusk, things were slipping away. And what could be done? Nothing. Each night, he bucked on the sheets until he came, sobbing and euphoric with tragic pleasure, hands scrabbling at an empty mattress. A big bed that used to be full and wasn’t now. 

Was he sick for doing it? For fucking himself in his dead lover’s bed? Or just longing for hands that would never touch him again?

***

When Remus stumbled down into Grimmauld’s kitchen, after nearly an entire week holed up in the dark cradle of Sirius’ bedroom, everyone was shocked.

Molly, Bill, Fleur, and Mad-Eye sat at the kitchen table all talking in hushed voices. They stopped the second they caught sight of Remus in the doorway.

“Tea, dear,” Molly said after a moment’s pause, “and some toast. You need to eat.” She stood immediately and started making the food. Remus wasn’t hungry. He said nothing. 

“Sit, sit,” Mad-Eye urged. With a groan, he stood, and offered his chair to Remus. When Remus, listless, didn’t move, he growled, “Sit, boy! You haven’t eaten in days.”

It was all a bit overwhelming, the flurry of voices and moods and energies around him. They fluttered and whizzed around, like bugs buzzing, Remus hypersensitive now, raw and wrought, wrung out, feeling everything and nothing all at once. It was blindness and psychedelia at the same time, and so dizzying, and before he knew it, Bill was holding him up. He’d nearly fainted.

Then food and tea were before him, a hand on his shoulder, and despite the nausea, he ate anyways. To stop the shaking. 

It was like some black gauzy curtain had been drawn around Remus, folks and flitting hands on the outside, and he heard them distantly, circling.

“Going now, Molly,” someone said. Mad-Eye? “Gotta get back the Ministry. Make sure he’s alright.” Then a whoosh, through the Floo. Didn’t matter. Far away. Remus wanted to throw up.

Someone’s hand, on his temples, neck and forehead. Soft and thin. Fleur.

“He alright?” Bill asked.

“Warm,” she answered, breathy, “but no fever.”

“Been stuck in that bed for a whole week, under the covers, of course he’s warm,” said Molly sharply to her. “Give the sheets a change, Fleur. I’ll see if I can get him to shower.”

Fleur pattered off.

“Mum, you can’t just order her around like that—”

“Yes, I can, William. If I don’t like her, that is.”

“ _Mum._ ”

“Hush. That is not the priority right now. Besides, your sister Ginny thinks Nymphadora would be good for you. I’m starting to agree.”

“Mum—”

Remus moaned, in dull agony, and they both shut up. Acid in his throat, sharp and tangy. He was mid-groan, swatting them both away because he knew what was about to happen, when the Floo roared again.

It all felt like the equivalent of staggering blind through the dark, trying to find a light switch. He just hoped no was in the way when—

And right as he doubled over, vomiting all over his bare feet, Severus Snape came into the room.

An elevator that kept plummeting down the shaft, jerking and then hurtling lower, Remus dipped back into unconsciousness. Or maybe it was more akin to drowning, tossed into wave after rolling wave, an unrelenting barrage with no break to catch his breath, disoriented and thrashed around.

When he surfaced, he was lying on the soft rug at the foot of Sirius’ bed.

Clouded and slow, he returned to world like dawn. His senses—the press of carpet on his naked back, cold hard floor beneath the heels of his feet, his sweat, chilled on bare skin—came back to him in parts.

It was the most awake he’d felt in days.

Movement in the bathroom, the bath turned on and running. Sirius. Because Remus had fallen asleep on the rug, passed out after the Department of Mysteries. And Sirius was here, caring for him, running a hot bath they could share, then a bed to spend the night in, where Remus could show Sirius how much he _loved_ him.

“The bath is ready.”

Snape came into the bedroom, drying his hands on a towel.

“Where’s Sirius?”

Snape’s face twitched.

“ _Fuck,_ ” Remus whined. It returned to him now, how he’d ended up here on the floor. He’d passed out in the kitchen.

Sirius had been dead for days.

“I’m sure you can get up yourself,” Snape said. Remus rose on his elbows: shirtless, in fraying pajama bottoms. Sweating and dying. With a groan, he carefully stood. Before the tub, a frothing pale blue mass, he looked at Snape.

“What’s in this?”

“A revitalizing potion. Since you haven’t eaten and made a rather impressive show of redelivering your toast.” He had the actual nerve to look amused. Turning to leave, he said, “I’ll be back in forty minutes, and see how you feel.”

Remus clambered in hesitantly. The water was cool; if it had been hot, he might’ve drowned. Perhaps that would’ve been welcomed. The last time he’d been in this bathroom, this very bathtub, his entire world had fallen apart. Months ago, at Christmas.

Snape returned exactly forty minutes later, seeming pleased at the color in Remus’ face, and how his skin had changed from sallow to just pale. He ordered Remus to wash up, and then, to preserve everyone’s already infringed-upon decency, disappeared.

Never in all his thirty-six years could Remus Lupin have predicted where he’d be now. Snivellus making him take baths, near _caring_ for him, because Sirius, pretty much the only person he’d made him feel worth anything, was dead.

A clean pair of clothes, robes, had been left on the closed toilet seat. Remus slipped them on, combed his wet hair. He stood in front of the mirror for a second, a thin, wretched man staring back. He deserved everything that had happened to him.

When he went into the bedroom, the bed—despite Molly’s instruction at changing the sheets—was stripped.

“Molly!” Remus went into the hall, carrying his damp towel. She met him on the stairs. “Where are the new sheets?”

“Hm…oh, for the bed?” She led back up to _his_ room, the one not often used. “You’re going to sleep here now, Remus.”

“No, I’m not.”

“I decided it was for the best, dear. My, Severus’ bath did you well,” she said, appraising him with a hand on his upper arm. He shrugged her off, uncharacteristically.

“I’m not sleeping here, Molly.”

“The other bed wasn’t good. Much too big, I think. You’re only one person.”

“Molly!”

“Oh, Severus,” Molly interrupted Remus’ anger, to address Snape, who was hovering in the hall. “Thank you for helping. He looks marvelously better.”

“Don’t mention it.”

_Why were they talking about him as if he wasn’t here?_

“Supper’s just about on,” she said cheerily, “If you wanted to stay, Severus, we’d be glad to have you. Don’t worry, just the Order.”

“Albus requested me back at Hogwarts.”

“Oh, of course. I understand. The invitation is always open.”

“The Order!” Remus said loudly. They both stared at him.

“Yes, the Order,” answered Molly, perplexed.

“You _cannot_ continue the Order,” Remus growled. “Not without him.”

“Remus, you’re not thinking clearly,” Molly said calmly. If it was supposed to fix anything, her response only made it worse.

“Molly,” Snape interjected, “Why don’t you go downstairs…”

Surprised at his rather almost _polite_ order, Molly sputtered to silence, hummed once to herself, and left. Remus stared daggers between her shoulder blades on her way out.  
When they were alone, they regarded each other for a second, distrusting. Snape was typically aloof; Remus had both lost and gained something. Snape saw it in his eyes, the eerie waxen look gained directly before a transformation. It rose like the wolf. Like losing Sirius had kept the moon stationary in the sky, nearly full, a breath from swelling, a place where Remus danced on a cliff edge of insanity.

“Stop it,” Snape said.

“Pardon me?”

“I said _stop it,_ ” Snape hissed. “It’s pathetic. It’s sad.”

“What is?” Remus challenged. They rivaled one another’s height. For the first time since Sirius’ death, Remus was alive.

“You are not special in all of this. We have all lost people we care about. All of us. And we’re all expected to keep going and move on with it, and so are you. _Stop._ ” Never had Remus heard Snape so animated.

“He’s fucking dead, and I’m supposed to _move on?_ ” Remus spat. “You have absolutely no place in all of this. What do you know about losing people? You’re completely alone!”

“Don’t you fucking dare say that.” Snape backed him up, until Remus’ legs met the bed’s edge, and he had to sit. “Don’t you fucking assume what I’ve been through and what I haven’t.”

“And I’m the sad and pathetic one!” Remus shouted, eyes glistening with tears.

“Pull yourself together,” Snape sneered. “You’re a fucking mess, and I understand you’re in pain, but we all are. I have experienced so much pain and loss you will never know, and if you think you’re somehow entitled to more grief than the rest of us, you are sorely mistaken.”

Remus started crying.

“I have lost people I love. People I’ve yearned for, people I couldn’t have. You are not misunderstood, you have people who care,” Snape leaned down into his face and roared, “but you are not special!”

Remus screamed. Far off, he wondered if the rest of the house heard him. Why were they all still here, anyways? Couldn’t they just all go home, away from this place? Once a palace, a temple now abandoned. Its god, dead.

That’s when Snape smacked him. A whip crack clean across the face.

Remus sat stunned into paralysis. Panting, Snape stood tall. His greasy hair swayed, and he brushed it back into place. Horrified, Remus lightly touched the stinging side of his face.

“You were always the level-headed one, Remus,” Snape whispered. “Always. Not dramatic and hysterical like him. You’re an adult. Act like one.”

And with one final hiss of disappointment at Remus’ broken hunched frame on the bed, Snape swept out of the room. When the silence settled, it was as if it had never happened. 

Eventually, after a great season, Remus rose like Lazarus. With the same dizziness that accompanied sitting up too fast, the truth rushed back to him. The emptiness. Not just the fact that he was alone, but that he was _alone_ , and would be forever. 

So he docked the boat, cleared the fog, and acted like he could walk in a straight line again. 

When they met Harry at the platform, to see him off with the Dursleys, Remus slapped on a plastic smile and pleasant mood. Seeing the boy get off the train and spot them, his expression glowing, Remus wanted to puke.

_You’ve no fucking clue what it’s like to get up every day and still be alive. You never had to let go of him, eventually. You loved him the whole time, and instead I gave him up, not even thinking I didn’t have the time to be doing such things. Fuck you._

When Harry hugged Remus goodbye, Remus hugged him back. Except, head over Harry’s shoulder, his face was slack and blank.

_I wish Bellatrix had killed you instead, you know that?_

 _There wasn’t even a body to bury. Nothing to cradle or kiss for the last time. He just slipped off, gone._

Grimmauld Place cleared out by the end of the month. The children had left at Christmas; whatever of their trash remained got binned by Fleur and Tonks, on a sweep through place in the last week of June.

Remus was the last to go, lingering. So many things had happened here that it was beginning to feel part of him. Happiness, sadness. Good sex and horrible fights. Belonging. Security. Love.

If he’d known it would’ve ended like this, maybe he would’ve behaved differently. He hadn’t ever thought, this late in his life, that he’d still possessed so much anger. What a rotten emotion.

The wide cut on his stomach, the one he’d sewn, scarred over. In July, when he was living at home, he sliced the wound open, and let it bleed. 

Then he sewed it up again, touching himself in between sutures. The final tug and tie, when blood slipped out around the stitches, made him spill. 

Molly and Fleur brought food; he always pretended to be napping when they visited. He never ate what they brought. He’d stolen every unsmoked, unopened pack of cigarettes and all the coffee and tea Sirius would never again drink and lived off that instead. 

At night, he Apparated into London’s grimy neon parts, the dirty places, and found as many long-haired dark eyed men he could. In the mornings, well-fucked and beat, he wondered why he felt unfaithful. 

In the mornings, in the end, he was alone. No matter how loved he’d been the night before. Of course, he was alone. It was the order of things.

Can’t play with the other kids.

Sequestered.

Making friends only to have them stolen away.

Losing his love once, and leaving him the second time.

Damn them all. Figures.

Wherever Sirius was, if he was _anywhere_ , Remus hoped, deep down, he was alone, too. Then maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> credit to J.K. Rowling for sampling part of the Order of the Phoenix, in italics.


	8. Chapter 8

An Epilogue 

August 1997:

The wedding was a gorgeous affair. 

A sprawling day, blue and green, air sweet with the perfume of early August. Tall cream tents covered both ceremony and reception, and despite being stuffed into wool dress robes, Remus couldn’t deny the allure of English summer. 

Heaven it was, honeyed with lust. He’d lost his virginity on a day just like today. The warm season made everyone so excited to love. 

Fleur, without exaggeration, was radiant, the perfect bride. Bill, standing on the altar, Remus thought a bit disobediently, was quite handsome, too. 

Even with Moody’s death lingering around, the day couldn’t be dampened. Death, now, was like breathing. Just part of being alive. 

“—the funniest thing!” Fleur said. “He sometimes scratches like he’s got fleas. And I tell him how silly he looks.” 

She sat next to Remus, relaying all the various lupine tendencies seen in her new husband. Only half-listening, Remus watched the dance floor glittering against the night, swinging with bright robes and great plumed hats and loud laughter. What it would be to have fun. For just a night, even. 

Weaving from table to table, Bill passed them. Fleur reached out and grabbed his hand. “Bill, sit down! I have just been telling Remus about you.”

“About me?” Bill laughed. He sat next to her and gave Remus a knowing wink. 

“How you are so like the wolf now.” 

Bill rolled his eyes. He grabbed her waist and kissed her cheek, and she squealed. Remus felt something inside him snap. 

“Oh, Fleur, so intrigued with my new existence. It’s a real condition, you know! I’m not something to play with.”

Remus forced a laugh. “Be careful, Bill. There’s some real monsters out there. Who’d give a lot for time with you.”

Bill and Fleur both started laughing. Possessed by her again, Bill kissed the corner of her mouth, hugging her from behind and refusing to let go. They rocked back and forth a bit, young lovers drunk on the summer. Remus realized that he was old. 

“No, Remus, seriously,” Bill said and took Remus’ hand in his. “Thank you. For everything.” 

After Bill’s return from St. Mungo’s, Remus had helped Molly further treat the wounds. Not perfect at potions, but well-versed in the healing of his own kind, he saw she was utterly lost when it came to her son. 

“They think they’ve got it,” he said, while grinding up an Aghada poultice. “But they don’t. Healers are great for Wizarding ailments but not for Darker Magic. They can cure curses just fine. Werewolves are a mystery to them.”

“He’s not a werewolf!” Molly insisted, laying a hand on Bill’s shoulder. She kept eyeing his face, slashed and stitched. 

“No, he isn’t,” Remus agreed. “But precautionary Magic never hurt.” 

“Oh, Remus, dear,” she continued, now touching his wrist in a similar manner to how she patted her son, forever a mother. “Please don’t take my tone as being against you. I just meant, you know, that Bill here—”

“We’ve gained a reputation for a reason. There are wolves like me, and then wolves like Greyback. I gave my parents a great headache when I was little, I’m sure. Not to worry.” 

And so, she retreated and watched Remus Lupin put her son back together, piece by piece.

“Scars healed alright?” Remus leaned back in his chair. He fit his fingers around the stem of his wine glass. Something to fiddle with. 

“Perfect. Just fine,” said Bill. Fleur brushed another kiss on his cheek. 

“It’s rugged,” she said thickly, and Bill blushed. 

“Congratulations to the both of you,” Remus offered sincerely, when Bill stood. “You’ve given us all some much-needed happiness.”

“Bill, you are leaving?” Fleur asked.

“Please,” Remus raised a hand, “Go on. Don’t spend your night with an old man.” 

“Psh!” Fleur swatted at him playfully, and Bill hooked an arm around her waist, pulling her away and laughing. “You are not old!” Then, overwhelmed, she said something in French, and Bill twirled her off, kissing every appropriate inch of skin available. 

_“I wanna marry you,” Sirius had said. More than once. After sex, during sex, one morning in the beginning of the first war, when James had moved out of their shared flat to go live with Lily, and Sirius had needed a roomate. And Remus had been more than happy to fulfill that request._

_One sunny morning he’d woken to the smell of grease and coffee, Sirius in the little kitchen, tight jeans yanked on haphazardly and unbuttoned, with disheveled hair and bare feet, while he cooked them both breakfast. So taken by the gesture, the potential for domesticity, the frivolous impossible fantasy of it, Remus rushed his love, held him and kissed him._

_“Marry me.” Sirius gazed up at him, hazy in the morning._

_“Sure. Alright. Anything for you.”_

_And Sirius sucked him right then and there, until Remus nearly collapsed and the toast burned to char, breakfast forgotten._

For a long time, Remus watched the party continue. If he had been another guest, a spectator searching for himself, he didn’t know what he’d find. In one corner stood Harry and Ginny, laughing and trying to get Hermione to dance with them. At another edge of the tent, Molly went around, touching hands and arms of guests, thanking them for coming, for enjoying the day with them all, despite current climates, and such things, while Arthur trailed behind her, comfortable and faithful. Scattered throughout were older wizards and witches, alone and less prone to the gay hysteria of celebration; instead they watched with mellow admiration and amusement: spectators at the races who’d stopped betting long ago and now just came for the good weather and funny hats.

It seemed Remus had involuntarily sailed off into being an elder, when nobody had told him it was happening. Had he not, just years ago, been in the place of Harry and his friends? A brimming student, and while bit with the bite of the world’s nauseating capability for evil, still shamelessly happy to be young?

Sometimes he forgot he was older. He wished someone had told him where he’d end up. Maybe he would’ve hugged everyone a little tighter, laughed a little louder, and given thanks to what he had when he didn’t know he’d lose it.

_Give great thanks to the hands that hold you up. Dependence is no weakness; if you’ve nothing to fall back on, it means you’re going it alone._

“Professor Lupin?” 

Luna Lovegood stood in front of him, head tilted and quizzical. Worry shone out from her bulbous yet attractive blue eyes, and to ease her, he smiled.

“Hello, Luna. You look lovely this evening. Are you enjoying yourself?”

“I suppose,” she said, and sat down next to him. “I don’t think you are. Are you? You don’t look very happy.”

“Oh, I’m quite alright, Luna. Thank you.”

Unconvinced, she began unfolding and refolding the fan-shaped napkin in front of her. She stole glances at him, checking to corroborate her claim. “I kept watching you from across the room, when you were talking to Fleur and Bill.”

People wrote her off because she sounded airy; Remus knew she was about the most clued-in witch there was. Sometimes, dare he say it, more so than Hermione.

“Yes?” Remus sipped his wine and looked at her.

“They were breaking your heart.”

“Oh,” he stopped, a bit taken aback. “Well, no, they weren’t.”

“It’s alright,” she said and patted his wool-covered shoulder. She then studied his suit for a minute, her mouth scrunched up. “You’re wearing green.”

“Yes.”

“Is it your suit?”

“Yes.” It was.

“Hm, I would’ve expected a lighter color, or maybe red. Being a Gryffindor and all, you know.”

“Green this evening, Ms. Lovegood.”

She hummed to herself, kept folding, and wouldn’t leave. Remus didn’t mind. During his brief tenure at Hogwarts, he’d grown fond of her. She was odd, yes, but she never judged, and Remus was fucking sick and tired of judgement in his life. Tired of people being mean. 

“I still think it’s absolutely terrible you had to leave.”

“Hm?” Remus roped himself back into the present. He’d been watching a witch and wizard dance out on the floor. It was clear they were in love with one another.

“When everyone found out you were a werewolf, and you left. You really were the best teacher we ever had.”

“That is incredibly kind of you, Luna, but I left on my own accord. It was time to go.”

“Well,” she said pointedly, fighting, “we miss you every day. It was a really happy place when you were there.”

“Then I’m glad I could provide that for you all. Learning should be enjoyed, I believe. Luna,” he continued, drinking again, “you’ve always had interest in learning independently. How are your studies coming along?”

“Oh, wonderfully!” She brightened. “People don’t often ask me that. Dad and I are working on some things right now for the Quibbler. It’s great fun, all very interesting.”

“That’s great!” Remus said. “When you finish, send me a copy, alright? I want to read what you’re working on.”

“Of course!” Luna smiled at him. “Dad worries we’re not selling enough, since most people think it’s a bit fringe, but I still enjoy it a lot.”

Silent again. Remus let her keep on arranging the napkin, which apparently was still entertaining. In fact, so focused was he on the dance floor—the dancing witch and wizard—that he didn’t notice she’d spent the last wordless five minutes staring at him.

“You’re crying.” 

When she said this, he saw that she was right: the night had broken and warped under his tear-filled eyes. He swiveled to look at her. He felt snuck up on, ambushed.

“Luna, I am so sorry.” The tears slipped over and ran down his scarred cheeks. With his sleeve, wool and scratched, he wiped them away quickly. “How inappropriate of me. This is supposed to be a happy night. For Bill and Fleur, and I’m fucking crying.”

If she was surprised at her professor's profanity, she didn’t react. Instead, she grabbed his hand and held it tight. Remus flicked a brief glance to the Trio and the other Weasleys, relieved to see they were all preoccupied: Fred was dancing ridiculously, and Molly was already making a beeline to swat him down. Nobody noticed the Luna clutching Remus’ hand while he dried his tears.

“You know, Remus,” Luna began softly. He looked at her, floundering. “There’s a little herd of Thestrals near here. They live in the woods down the road a bit. I found them a few weeks ago, on my way back home. They’re quite therapeutic. If you ever want to go visit them with me some time, you can.”

“They pulled the carriages, didn’t they?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Remus said. “Thank you.”

Luna left him there, eventually, to rejoin the party. He didn’t want her to stay longer, anyways. Grief was for the old. 

The celebration rose again: renewed rounds of drink, louder music, continued waves of  
chatter and laughter. Like a flood, the night enveloped him, until it hid him under its unbroken surface, and no longer was his visible. 

Except to one. 

When Remus let a waiter refill his glass, and then drank, his gaze rose to the sparkling scene before him. Tonks stood across the room; she watched him carefully, intensely, until he knew he was being watched. 

Then he saw her. And when she smirked and winked, he didn’t look away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (yes, I know that, canonically, Tonks and Lupin married well before the Bill and Fleur's wedding, but screw canon.)  
> Thank you all for reading!


End file.
